LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago. Today Moscow controls about one-fifth of the country's land, and it's pouring the equivalent of billions of dollars into developing that land for its own benefit. Reporters at Reuters recently published a deep investigation into exactly how Russia is transforming miles of Ukrainian land, all while Ukraine's European allies call for Russia to give the territory back. Mari Saito is one of five reporters who worked on that investigation, and she joins me now. Good morning.
MARI SAITO: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
FADEL: Thank you for being here, Mari. So what is Russia building in these occupied territories?
SAITO: Russia is building extremely aggressively. What they're building is infrastructure. They're building roads. They're building railways, highways. And they've taken over occupied ports in Ukraine's south on the Black Sea. So they're basically building infrastructure that allows them to improve their military logistics and also help them move commodities and assets out of Ukraine to Russia or for export to other countries.
FADEL: That doesn't sound like a country that is planning to leave the territory it's occupied.
SAITO: I think that's what we have learned from this reporting - the kind of vastness. And we're talking - you know, Russia has allocated around $11.8 billion equivalent in their federal cash to the occupied territory. They're aggressively building the roads and the highways to better connect these regions to Russia, and none of that indicates they plan to leave.
FADEL: Now, the world recognizes this as Ukrainian land, but the Kremlin insists that Russia is entitled to this land. Why?
SAITO: They see it as historic territory that is theirs. And they say that the people living in these territories, especially in Donbas in the eastern region of Ukraine, want to be part of Russia. The Russian government is not trying to hide the investments or these projects that they're expanding in the region. They kind of frame these as goodwill projects to improve the lives of people living under occupation. Of course, the reality is much more complicated than that.
FADEL: And you reached out to the Kremlin to respond to the findings in this investigation. What did Russia say?
SAITO: They said that these four territories are a very important and integral part of the Russian Federation. And they added that these people living in these territories are subjects of Russia and said that whatever they're doing there is written into the constitution of the country.
FADEL: So what does it mean? If Russia is building within these four territories as if they're not leaving, what does it mean for any peace deal that the U.S. brokers between Russia and Ukraine?
SAITO: That's the biggest question, the most important question about this, and we put this question to President Zelenskyy last week. My colleagues in Kyiv interviewed the president. And, you know, he first of all characterized these kind of infrastructure upgrades and buildouts of roads and things in occupied territories as just a facade and that they're basically militarizing this region. For Ukraine, they see this as Russia creating more and more facts on the ground to incorporate these regions and tie them even closer to Russia proper in order to reap the benefits. They're creating facts on the ground and making it much, much harder in the future for these lands to be returned back to Ukraine.
FADEL: Mari Saito is an investigative reporter with Reuters. Thank you so much, Mari, for your work and for coming on to discuss it.
SAITO: Thank you so much.
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