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After the Ukrainian authorities fled Kherson, the new military-civilian administration had to take over power to annex the region to Russia and protect the Ukrainian language and culture, the Russian press writes, citing the self-proclaimed leader Kirill Stremousov. In reality, the authorities in Kherson were evacuated following the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, which bombards Ukrainian territories daily.
NEWS: “After forming a people's government, the Kherson region will become a worthy part of Russia, the deputy head of the military-civilian administration of the region, Kirill Stremousov, said at a meeting with residents of the liberated village of Vinogradovo, but specified that the population has the last say in this.
“I sincerely believe that we will be able to rebuild and move to another level of living, which I am now observing in the Russian Federation”, he said in a video posted on his Telegram channel, the Russian publication Life.ru reads, highlighting the successes of the separatist authorities in recent months.
“The Ukrainian language will remain. It must be the state language on the territory of Kherson. No one will ban the language”, Stremousov said.
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“Our goal is to preserve Ukrainian culture. It is not a genocide, it is not a destruction. It is denazification”, the president of the Rescue Committee for Peace and Order explained. Stremousov recalled that after the former authorities fled, the military-civilian administration was forced from the first days of the special military operation to take responsibility for the fate of the region”, according to an article published by Fedpress.ru.
NARRATIVES: 1. The population of Kherson wants a union with Russia. 2. The Ukrainian authorities fled Kherson. 3. Ukrainian language and culture are protected by the separatist leaders and Russia.
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: In reality, Kirill Stremousov is not the representative of the Kherson regional authorities, but a collaborator of the Russians, appointed deputy head of the military-civilian administration, which is an occupation body. He does not have the legitimacy or the legal right to speak about the opinions of the majority of the inhabitants of the region, and especially about the union of the southern Ukrainian region with Russia. The results of the 2020 local elections are also telling of Kirill Stremousov's lack of legitimacy. He wanted to become mayor of Kherson and won only 1.37% of the votes . He was a member of pro-Russian parties. After the invasion of Ukraine, he established with the support of the Kremlin a “Rescue Committee”, which allegedly helps the Russian speakers in the area.
According to a survey conducted by the National Democratic Institute and the Kyiv Institute of Sociology, 89% of Ukrainians do not accept territorial cessions in the name of peace. Most polls conducted in southern Ukraine before the invasion show that Ukrainians there are critical of Russia, which supported the war in Donbass and annexed Crimea in 2014. Footage from the early days of Russia's occupation of southern Ukraine showed that the local population was protesting the invasion, trying to stop the Russian tanks.
According to sociological surveys, conducted in March 2022 in the territories controlled by Ukraine, 9 out of 10 Ukrainians in the south of the country consider Russia and enemy . Also, Ukrainians in the south of the country believe in Ukraine’s victory in the war started by Moscow.
The thesis that the Ukrainian authorities fled Kherson is also false. They were evacuated following military pressure from Russia, which Stremousov himself confirms, speaking of the “special military operation”. The Kherson regional administration announced in March the evacuation to another locality because of the constant shelling and fighting in the city, and there are announcements on the official Facebook page of the local authorities about the situation in the region, about the liberated villages and the safe routes to evacuate the population.
Stremousov's statements, quoted by the Russian media, about the interest in protecting the Ukrainian language and culture while at the same time continuing the “denazification” are nonsense. “Denazification” is seen by Russia as a process of destroying Ukrainian national-cultural elements, considered a barrier to restoring the influence of the “Russian world” on Ukraine. In reality, Ukrainians are persecuted by the separatist authorities in Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson for using the Ukrainian language. Journalistic investigations have shown that people who do not speak Russian do not pass the verification procedures at the screening centers in the Ukrainian occupied territories.
In the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, all Ukrainian-language publications have been closed and there are no Ukrainian-language schools. The issue of human rights in the Crimean peninsula has been addressed several times at the level of the competent UN institutions. The UN resolutions have included several calls on Russia to protect the rights of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars. The example of Crimea shows that the Russian Federation is initiating the Russification of the occupied territories, and does not have policies on respecting the rights of linguistic minorities.
Veridica has already debunked a number of false narratives regarding the Russian-occupied regions of southern Ukraine. In June-July this year, the Russian press wrote that Romania will help Ukraine recover Kherson. In May, the Russian government press wrote that Crimean Tatars support Russia’s military actions on the territory of Ukraine, and in April that southern Ukraine, liberated by nationalists, wants to be annexed to Russia.
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