When Yulia van der Noordaa calls her parents from the Netherlands in Kherson in southern Ukraine, her parents close the windows. They don’t want their pro-Russian neighbors to listen in. Those neighbors are happy with the Russian takeover of their city. “Don’t worry,” they tell Yulia’s parents. “We are liberated, everything will be fine.”
Many Kherson residents see it differently. On March 2, a week after the Russian attack on Ukraine, the port city at the mouth of the Dnieper, 70 kilometers from the Black Sea, fell into the hands of the Russian army. The city has been occupied ever since. Or as Ukrainians say: ‘temporarily occupied’. Since March 2, 40 percent of the nearly 300,000 inhabitants have left the city. They have not fled from violence, but from the steady Russification of their city. The future is too uncertain.
Kherson – named after the former Greek colony of Chersonesos in Crimea – receives relatively little international attention. After the Russian withdrawal from the Kiev region and the destruction of Mariupol, the focus is on the battle in the eastern Donbas. However, there is also fighting in the south. The Ukrainian army is gaining ground in a recent counter-offensive in the Kherson area and the nearby city of Mikolayiv.
Kherson was Russia’s first serious conquest and has had a pro-Russian mayor since late April. The district of the same name (oblast), especially to the east of the city, is almost the same size as Belgium and is also under pro-Russian rule. The region is a testing ground that makes the Russian intentions with conquered parts of Ukraine visible.
Read also this opinion piece by Bas Heijne about the war and the West
Russian parliamentarian Igor Kastyukevich, a major figure in the largest United Russia party, showed some of those intentions this week† “The incorporation of Russia’s Kherson region will be complete, comparable to Crimea,” he wrote in a report published Tuesday. It is the first public plea for the Kherson region to become part of Russia.
Incompetence or betrayal
Yulia van der Noordaa can’t imagine anything with it. She lived in Kherson until she was 17, she returned there to marry her Dutch husband, until last year they went on holiday there. Unlike the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, she expects resistance will be fierce. Three quarters of Kherson’s population is Ukrainian, 20 percent is ethnically Russian. Pro-Ukrainian parties always won in elections. In a 2014 poll, 91 percent of residents opposed joining Russia.
At the end of February, those inhabitants were unpleasantly surprised by the rapid conquest of their city. Russian soldiers were able to advance effortlessly from Crimea. There was Ukrainian resistance on the crucial Antonovsky Bridge over the Dnieper, east of the city, but the bridge was not blown up for reasons that are unclear. That had slowed the Russian advance considerably.
There is speculation about treason in Kherson† At the beginning of April, President Zelensky fired the head of the security service in Kherson, without explanation. He called him an ‘antihero’. “We screwed up,” Zelensky’s adviser Oleksi Arestovych later said of Kherson’s capture. “The biggest question is where there was incompetence and where was betrayal.”
Read also about Ukrainian mayors in wartime
Mayor Ihor Kolychayev claimed to have made good agreements with the occupying forces on 2 March. The Ukrainian flag could continue to fly at the city hall, Ukrainian legislation remained intact, tanks would stay away from the city. In March Surprising videos from Kherson came out, with protesters challenging Russian military personnel. Such images disappeared when this protest was violently suppressed. At the end of April, local and regional administrators were replaced by pro-Russian puppets.
No more normal life
Freedom no longer exists for the inhabitants of Kherson, says Iuliia Mendel, journalist and former press secretary of President Zelensky. Like Yulia van der Noordaa, she grew up in the region. She also follows Telegram channels daily with news about the area and has a lot of contact with acquaintances who live there. Foreign journalists do not enter Kherson. Mendel: “The people I talk to no longer have a normal life. They cannot leave the city, can be checked at any checkpoint.”
Russian soldiers are looking for people who can offer resistance, human rights activist Olha Resjetylova recently told a seminar on Russian crimes in Kherson† These are reservists from the Territorial Defense Forces, veterans, activists and local administrators. They are detained and tortured. According to Ukrainian authorities, 600 people are involved. The BBC spoke to an anti-Russian activist and a journalist who were demonstrably tortured. Disappearances are also reported.
Everyday life is complicated. Many companies are closed, people have no work and therefore hardly any money. Stores, where many products are missing, only want cash, but the ATMs are often empty. On the street it is empty and quiet. Many residents have left. Those left behind stay inside, they focus on family and loved ones.
Van der Noordaa: “My parents do not want to leave, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up.” Her parents are “mentally tired.” From sleeping on the floor for fear of being shot, from looking all day long for a place to buy toothpaste, from missing contact with the outside world when the internet goes down for a few days. But above all because of the uncertainty about their future and that of their city.
Permanent propaganda
In addition to the ‘normal’ problems with everyday life, there is Russification. Step by step, public life is moving from Ukrainian to Russian. The first step was TV: Ukrainian channels were exchanged for Russian state TV, with permanent propaganda about the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. There is also locally tailored propaganda, Mendel says. “They are playing with people’s feelings by saying that Ukraine has given up the Kherson region.”
Ukrainian ISPs are being forced to route their traffic through Russian providers. Mobile phone sim cards become Russian. Van der Noordaa knows the owner of the Ukrainian provider Skynet, which is now connected to a Russian provider in Crimea. “Ukrainian websites are no longer accessible, but communication via Whatsapp and Skype is still possible. He had to choose between quitting altogether or this, I understand his decision.”
The Ukrainian language is being systematically erased, the British Ministry of Defense confirmed on Wednesday† In schools, the curriculum is adapted, with Russian textbooks telling the Russian version of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. Rubles are put into circulation through benefits and pensions. Companies are urged to quote prices not only in hryvnia but also in rubles. Mendel: “Nobody wants this, but it is very difficult to ignore the demands of an occupier.”
Inhabitants of other parts of Ukraine can start with an accelerated procedure since this week apply for a Russian passport in the Kherson region. In the Donbas, Russia has used the issuance of passports for Russianification before.
The curriculum is adapted in schools, with Russian textbooks telling the Russian version of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine
The crowning glory of the Russification of occupied territories is a referendum. The Kremlin likes to use ‘the will of the people’ as a political justification for military annexations. This was also the case in Crimea in 2014. A referendum was also announced in Kherson, but it has been postponed several times. Mendel thinks the referendum will be difficult for Russia. “In Crimea it came soon after the annexation, people were attacked by it. We are now better prepared. There is also much more resistance, and citizens are less obedient than then.”
There is definitely resistance to the Russian takeover of southern Ukraine, notes Ukraine expert Alexander Motyl of Rutgers University. In an article on defense website 1945 he signals a strong increase in guerrilla actions by Ukrainian ‘partisans’. This ranges from distributing flyers to sabotaging infrastructure and murdering pro-Russian administrators and soldiers. The hearths of the resistance are Melitopol and Kherson. Guerilla can become an important factor in the war in those regions, Motyl expects. Especially when the Russian army is attacked from behind by partisans and from the front by the Ukrainian army.
Read, see or listen more about the war in Ukraine? NRC editors give tips
#careful #listen #proRussian #neighbors #occupied #Kherson