Russian attack | A politician who escaped from Kherson: At first, Russia’s activities were completely chaotic in the occupied territories

Foreign countries|Russian invasion

Russian president Vladimir Putin at the beginning of the war, the administration had no plans to annex the occupied territories from Ukraine to Russia.

No plan, no human resources and no know-how. Maybe not even the intention.

This conclusion has been reached by a native of the Herson region Myhailo Hončarwho has analyzed the operation of the occupying power in the education sector.

Hontšar is the director of the education department of the Beryslav city council located in the Kherson region and is doing a doctoral thesis in the field of educational sciences. Beryslav is located on the right bank of the Kahovka reservoir.

Russia took control of the city of Kherson and the region of the same name in the first weeks of its invasion in March, and based on a fake referendum, has announced that it has annexed them along with three other regions belonging to Ukraine.

Russia, which has had little success in the war in recent weeks, has turned on a new gear and violently bombed Ukraine’s energy sector and civilian targets.

The situation in the region is the president of Ukraine to Volodymyr Zelensky advisor It would be Arestovych by however, has changed in a more worrying direction for Ukraine: Russia has thrown “huge military power” into the region, which “will be very difficult to crush”.

Why is the examination of the education sector important in Hontšari’s opinion?

“By taking by taking over education, the occupying administration can show that it intends to be there for a long time; that it dominates the region, and there are no other alternatives,” says Hontšar, who spoke on the topic on Thursday also in Helsinki at the Alexander Conference by remote connection.

It can be done through education communicate with the local population in kindergartens and schools. It is of enormous importance if the population is to be integrated into Russia.

“Everything happened chaotically because there was no plan about who would do what,” says Hontšar.

He believes that this indicates that there was no concrete plan to join the regions to Russia – perhaps it was not in the plans at all. Because of this, the occupiers did not have enough human resources to be able to operate effectively in the areas.

It took the whole spring to organize.

“The occupation of the area began on February 24, but they were only able to decide on training issues at the turn of May or June.”

At the end of May, the occupied areas were oozing knowledge about the Russification of Ukrainian children through the school system. According to Hontšari, there is still no information about which subjects are taught in the occupied territories be taught.

Read more: Ukrainian authorities: The actual annexation of Mariupol to Russia has begun – Ukrainian children are being Russified and Ukrainian literature is being destroyed

In some occupied areas, Ukrainian authorities operated until the beginning of August, Hontšar says.

“So almost half a year. In one cabinet sat the occupying administration and in the other the Ukrainian administration, which carried out Ukrainian policy in the occupied territories, under the Ukrainian flag. You probably understand the absurdity of the situation,” Hontšar laughs.

Although The Russian attack has forced the commissioner to evacuate six months ago, he still has connections to Kherson and its area.

Or maybe it should be said that Hontšari had connections. At the moment, Herson cannot be contacted, he says. The situation has been that all connections in the area have been cut off for a few days, Hontšar told HS on Wednesday.

“When the occupation administration arrived, they brought their own communication systems and isolated the area from the Ukrainian system already in the spring“, Hontšar says.

However, the situation changed last weekend: now you can’t even connect to Russian connections in the area.

Ukraine is believed to be preparing a counter-offensive to retake Kherson, and the Russian occupation government issued an evacuation order last Friday. Residents have been evacuated on ferries across the Dnieper River and transported to Crimea, according to media reports by even as far south as Krasnodar region. Occupation administration announced having evacuated 70,000 residents from the city by Wednesday. At the same time, Russia has brought more military power to the region.

“Now they have collected that [viestintä]their technology and left the area in a knowledge vacuum,” says Hontšar.

“Locally, the connections may work somewhere, but system-wide there has been a collapse.”

Information about the broken connections to HS was also confirmed on Wednesday by a lecturer at the University of Helsinki, who is of Ukrainian background Iryna Herzon, whose family has contacts in the city. According to him, the connections have been lost since last Saturday.

“The internet stopped working because the Russian company left, the cable is broken, and many people have it [ukrainalaisilla] there are no Russian SIM cards,” says Herzon.

During the interview, the internet connection freezes at times and breaks once in the Carpathians, in western Ukraine, where Hončar is now.

“The lights don’t work now due to power cuts. Russian bombings have hit our energy plants. The internet goes down,” says Hontšar.

Honchar hopes that his research will be useful later. Later, it will also be time to wash Ukraine’s internal dirty laundry.

But only later on.

“After we have won,” Hontšar states.