By FRANCESCA EBEL and YURAS KARMANAU
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-moscow-referendums-crimea-7129a6d1f5ab81279ac7cf1a6be0996b
LVIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ever since Russian forces captured the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson in early March, residents have sensed that the occupiers had a special plan for their city. Now, amid a crescendo of warnings from Ukraine that Russia plans to hold a sham referendum to turn the territory into a pro-Moscow “People’s Republic,” locals appear to have guessed correctly.
After Russian forces withdrew from the occupied areas around Kyiv in early April, they left scenes of horror and traumatized communities in their wake. But in Cherson – a city with an important shipbuilding industry at the confluence of the Dnieper and the Black Sea near the Crimea annexed by Russia – the occupiers are taking a different path.
“The soldiers patrol and walk around in silence. They don’t shoot people in the streets,” Olga, a local teacher, said in a phone interview last month after the region was sealed off by Russian forces. “They’re trying to give the impression that they’re coming in peace to rid us of something.”
“It’s a bit scary,” said 63-year-old Alexander, who, like other residents, only gave his first name for fear of reprisals. “But there is no panic, people are helping each other. There is a very small minority of people who are happy that it is under Russian control, but mostly nobody wants Kherson to be part of Russia.”
While the city has so far been spared the atrocities committed elsewhere, daily life is anything but normal. After Russia occupied Kherson and the surrounding region, all access was cut off. Kherson is now suffering from serious shortages of medicines, cash, dairy and other foodstuffs, and Ukrainian officials warn the region could face a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
Russia has blocked all humanitarian aid other than its own, which troops are delivering in front of Russian state television cameras and which many residents refuse. Without cash deliveries to Kherson’s banks, the Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia, dwindles in circulation, and damaged communication networks mean that credit card payments often go through. Access to Ukrainian television was blocked and replaced by Russian state channels. A strict curfew was imposed.
Residents believe Russian troops have not yet besieged or terrorized the city – like they have in Bucha and Mariupol – because they plan to hold a referendum to create a so-called “Kherson People’s Republic” like the pro-Russian breakaway territories to the east create Ukraine. Ballots for a vote due to take place in early May are already being printed, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Lyudmila Denisova warned this month.
In an address to the nation on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke directly to residents of occupied Kherson, accusing Russia of planning an orchestrated referendum and urging and warning residents to be careful about personal information they share with Russian soldiers that attempts might be made to falsify votes. “That is reality. Be careful,” he said.
Kherson Mayor Igor Kolykhaiev joined the chorus of warnings, saying in a Zoom interview on Ukrainian TV that such a vote would be illegal as Kherson officially remains part of Ukraine.
Russia has been silent on plans to hold a referendum in Kherson, with Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko saying this week he was not aware of any such proposal.
But there is cause for concern. In 2014, a controversial referendum in Crimea amid Russian annexation was widely believed to be rigged, with results showing nearly 97% of voters favored joining Russia.
A series of Russian actions this week have added to the growing sense of panic in Kherson. The mayor reported on social media on Monday that Russian troops had seized City Hall, where the Ukrainian flag was no longer flying. On Tuesday, the Russians replaced the mayor with their own official.
A prominent Russian commander, Major General Rustam Minnekayev, announced plans to take “total control” of southern Ukraine and Donbass, the predominantly Russian-speaking industrial center of eastern Ukraine, with the aim of establishing a land corridor to Crimea. And Ukrainian military intelligence reported that Russia intends to forcibly mobilize local populations, including doctors, in the southern occupied territories in support of the Russian war effort.
Kherson is a strategically important city and the gateway to broader control of the south. From Kherson, Russia could launch a stronger offensive against other southern cities, including Odessa and Krivy Rih.
Occupation of the Kherson region would also maintain Russia’s access to the North Crimean Canal. After the annexation, Ukraine cut off water from the canal that flows from the Dnieper to Crimea, which previously supplied 85% of the peninsula’s needs.
Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst at the Penta Center think tank in Kyiv, says the Russian military’s softer behavior in Kherson is due to the deployment of units from Crimea and separatists from Donetsk and Luhansk who are either ethnic Ukrainians or have close ties to the region have there. “Therefore there were no atrocities,” he said.
However, the situation in the surrounding Kherson region tells a very different story – with daily reports of kidnapping, torture, murder or rape. Thousands of people were deprived of electricity, water and gas.
“The situation in the Kherson region is much worse and much more tragic,” said Oleh Baturin, a local journalist. “Kherson is a big city and there are not that many soldiers. It’s easier for them to take control of the villages; they are defenseless.”
On April 19, Russian forces opened fire on the villages of Velyka Oleksandrivka and Rybalche, killing civilians and damaging houses, the Kherson region prosecutor’s office reported. A week earlier, Russian troops shot dead seven people in a residential building in the village of Pravdyne. “Then, in order to cover up the crime, the occupier blew up the house containing the bodies of the executed,” the report reads.
Russian soldiers have also kidnapped local activists, journalists and war veterans, according to Kolykhaiev, the mayor of Kherson, who said more than 200 people had been kidnapped.
Among them was Baturin, who was arrested near his home in Kakhovka, 60 miles (90 kilometers) east of Kherson. The journalist was meeting with an acquaintance from another village when a group of Russian soldiers attacked him at the train station. They kept him in isolation for a week, Baturin said, and interrogated him every day; The soldiers asked for the names of organizers of anti-occupation protests, as well as local soldiers and veterans. He could hear torture sounds from other cells.
After his release, he fled the occupied territory with his family.
“If I had stayed, I am absolutely sure they would come for me again,” Baturin said, speaking over the phone after escaping Ukrainian-controlled territory last week.
Analyst Fesenko says the referendum plan shows Russia’s intention to occupy the region in the long term.
“In Crimea and Donbas, Russia had the support of local people, but that is not the case in southern Ukraine, where Ukrainians want to live in Ukraine. And that means that in the event of a long-term occupation, Russia risks facing a broad partisan movement,” Fesenko said.
Despite the great risk, in the first weeks of the occupation, thousands of protesters gathered daily in Kherson’s main square, draped in Ukrainian flags and holding signs that read “This is Ukraine.” Videos on social media showed people shouting at Russia’s tanks and heavily armed soldiers. The protests are now happening weekly and on Wednesday Russian troops used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse them.
Olga, the teacher, participates regularly. She used to speak Russian, now she refuses to speak the language. “I will never be able to communicate with Russians again. How can I think about people bombing maternity hospitals and children?” she said. “We thrived – and now they’ve ruined our lives.”
There was also resistance from Ukraine. In what appeared to be a Ukrainian counterattack late Wednesday, a series of explosions rocked the TV tower and temporarily paralyzed Russian channels, both Ukrainian and Russian news organizations reported.
Still, there is a palpable sense of growing trepidation among the city’s residents. Mayor Kolykhaiev said there was a panicked rush to the country following warnings of a Russian referendum and mobilization. “Lines of people trying to leave our city have grown to five kilometers,” he said, adding that about a third of the city’s pre-war population of 284,000 had fled.
After Zelenskyi’s address to the nation, Olga sent a WhatsApp message to AP: “The situation in Kherson is tense. My family and I want to leave … but now the Russian soldiers do not allow it at all. It’s getting more and more dangerous here.”
Late Monday evening, Kolykhaiev wrote on Facebook that armed Russian soldiers broke into the Kherson City Council building, took away the keys and replaced the guards with their own.
On Tuesday, the mayor came back and said he had refused to cooperate with the new administration appointed by Russia’s regional military commander, Oleksandr Kobets.
“I am staying in Kherson with the people of Kherson,” he wrote. “I’m with you.”