Abstract
<jats:p>The article examines the process of the historical territories population (Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Repub-lics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions) socio-political adaptation under the conditions of the special military operation. The relevance of the work is due to the need for a political science understanding of integration pro-cesses in the new Russian Federation constituent entities, which are accompanied by a set of military, political and social challenges. The aim of this study is to identify the stages, institutional conditions, and instruments of socio-political adaptation of the population of these historical territories. The theoretical basis of the study is formed by the concepts of political adaptation presented in the Russian political scientists works, as well as works devoted to anti-crisis public administration. The empirical base was formed by regulatory legal acts de-fining the new territories status, reports of the Federation Council relevant committees, and sociological re-search data. As a result of the study, three stages of adaptation are identified, differing in the nature of the pop-ulation’s political expectations and the mechanisms of public administration used. Institutional gaps in the sys-tem of public authority at the initial stage of integration are identified. It is substantiated that the success of the adaptation process directly depends on the military-strategic, legal and socio-political measures synchroniza-tion as well as on the ability of the state to form an all-Russian civic identity.</jats:p>