After the seizure of Crimea by the Russians, Rustem stood up for the Crimean Tatars, who were illegally detained and arrested. He often attended political trials against Crimean Tatar activists; in particular, he acted in support of Mustafa Dzhemilev and Nariman Dzhelal. The man joined the «Council of Elders of the Sudak Region». He also participated in the activities of «Crimean Solidarity». In 2018, Russian security forces tried to intimidate the man, handed him a warning about the «inadmissibility of unauthorized mass gatherings». However, he did not stop fighting for the rights of his people. 

Since 2014, the occupation authorities have been putting pressure on Rustem Useinov to move out of the house. On October 20, 2020, the so-called administration of the city of Sudak filed a complaint with the illegal Sudak City Court regarding the «vacation of an arbitrarily occupied land plot». On June 29, 2021, the so-called «court» issued a decision «on satisfying the claims of the administration». Rustem Useinov was ordered to vacate the «arbitrarily occupied» land plot by demolishing the buildings located on it with his own hands. In case he did not do that, the decision provided for forced demolition.

The decision states that Rustem Useinov was allegedly notified about all three «trials» that were held in the land plot case. However, he did not receive any letters at his place of residence. According to the man, the occupation administration deliberately sent messages to his old address, where he had not lived for 20 years. 

Rustem appealed this decision to the so-called «Supreme Court of the Republic of Crimea». However, the house was already ordered to be demolished even before the decision on appeal was adopted. This contradicted even the Russian legislation.

Fevzi Dzhyrikov, an activist and friend of Rustem, is sure that thereby the Russian Federation also punishes all dissenting Crimean Tatars who have their own opinion.

Rustem Useinov was ordered to pay for the demolition of the house himself. The amount was more than 42 thousand rubles (about 570 dollars). This money was deducted from his pension payments. The man was supported by activists who raised an even larger amount. They also provided temporary shelter to Rustem. He had spent the winter at his friends’, but already in the spring, as soon as he felt better, he returned to the land where his house used to be located. He still lives there, in a tent, with almost no belongings.

Useinov does not plan to dispute the demolition of the building. In his opinion, this would mean the recognition of Russian power in Crimea.

Rustem Useinov is not the only one who was deprived of property in Crimea by the occupation authorities. Numerous evidences were collected that attest to the systematic nature of this policy of the Russian occupation authorities. For this purpose, the so-called «Crimean authorities» use various methods, including the direct destruction of such property, due to the alleged illegality of its construction. According to the data of the NGO RCHR, as of June 2021, 3,984 people had been identified as victims of the seizure and destruction of real estate by the occupation authorities. Violations of property rights and confiscation of real estate in Crimea were harshly condemned by the international community. In particular, the violations were mentioned in the resolutions of the UN General Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the European Parliament.

On March 20, 2020, the President of the Russian Federation adopted Decree No. 201 «On Amendments to the List of Border Territories Where Foreign Citizens, Stateless Persons, and Foreign Legal Entities Cannot Own Land Plots», according to which almost the entire territory of the peninsula is illegally classified as the so-called «border territory of the Russian Federation», where the citizens of Ukraine are prohibited from owning land plots. This significantly worsened the situation with the protection of property rights in the temporarily occupied peninsula.

With the start of a full-scale invasion in 2022, violations of property rights in the temporarily occupied territories became widespread. Such violations, in particular, were recorded in the reports of the OSCE Moscow Mechanism and the Interim Report of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the OSCE. In the occupied territories of the Luhansk region, the Russians form «registries of maneuverable housing inventory», which include apartments without the documentation that confirms ownership. In the occupied territories of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, Russian soldiers settle in apartments and houses that were left by the owners. 

Such actions of the Russian occupation authorities could be qualified as war crimes.