The ongoing military occupation of Ukraine's Kherson Oblast by Russian forces began on 24 February 2022, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine from Crimea. It was administered under a Russian-controlled military-civilian administration until 30 September 2022, when the Russian government declared it had annexed the territory (an annexation widely regarded as illegal and unrecognized internationally). Since then Russia administers it as an internationally unrecognized federal subject of Russia.
Russia captured the city of Kherson on 1 March 2022. Kherson was the only regional capital that Russia has managed to capture in the invasion, though the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk had been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Most of the rest of Kherson Oblast fell to Russian forces in the early months of the invasion.
Russia laid the groundwork for annexation in the following months by introducing the Russian ruble as official currency and forcibly removing the hryvnia from circulation. After holding staged referendums in September 2022, Russia declared that it had annexed Kherson Oblast on 30 September, including parts of the oblast that it did not control at the time and small occupied areas of neighboring Mykolaiv Oblast. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the annexations as violating international law in Resolution ES-11/4.
In October 2022, as a Ukrainian counteroffensive approached the city of Kherson itself, the Russian administration's executive bodies evacuated from Kherson to the left bank of the Dnieper River. They set up a new administrative centre in Henichesk, in the far south of the Kherson region. Throughout early November 2022, Russian forces fully withdrew from all the areas of Kherson and Mykolaiv regions on the right bank of the Dnieper, including the city of Kherson proper. Ukrainian forces entered the city of Kherson on 11 November. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the Kherson region remained a "subject of the Russian Federation" despite the withdrawal.
Background
During the 2014 occupation of Crimea, Russian forces also occupied a gas distribution centre at the town of Strilkove on the Arabat spit in Kherson Oblast, from 15 March. In December 2014, they left territories of Kherson, including the area of Strilkove, the Ad peninsula, and the village of Chonhar.
On 24 February 2022, Russian forces began an invasion of Ukraine. Fighting began across the Kherson Oblast, resulting in multiple Russian successes. On 1 March, Russian forces captured the capital city of the oblast, Kherson, beginning a military occupation of the city.
History
Initial military occupation
Shortly after Kherson was captured, the Russian Ministry of Defence said talks between Russian forces and city administrators regarding the maintenance of order were underway. An agreement was reached in which the Ukrainian flag would still be hoisted in the city while Russia established the new administration. Mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev announced new conditions for the city's residents: citizens could only go outside during daytime and were forbidden to gather in groups. Additionally, cars were only allowed to enter the city to supply food and medicine; these vehicles were to drive at minimum speeds and were subject to searches. Citizens were warned not to provoke Russian soldiers and obey any commands given.
In the first days of the invasion, Russian forces established control over and unblocked the North Crimean Canal, effectively rescinding a longstanding water blockage imposed on Crimea by Ukraine after the 2014 Russian annexation of the peninsula.
On 5 March, Kolykhaiev said that there was no armed resistance in the city and Russian troops were "quite settled". He requested humanitarian aid, stating that the city lacked power, water, and medicine. Later that day, around 2,000 protesters marched in the city center. The protesters waved Ukrainian flags, sang the national anthem, and chanted patriotic slogans. A video showed Russian soldiers firing into the air to dissuade the protestors. There were also claims that the Russian force had a list of Ukrainian activists in the city that they wanted to capture. On 9 March, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces stated that Russia had detained more than 400 people in Kherson due to ongoing protests.
On 12 March, Ukrainian officials said that Russia was planning to stage a referendum in Kherson to establish the Kherson People's Republic, similar to the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic. Serhiy Khlan, deputy leader of the Kherson Oblast Council, said that the Russian military had called all the members of the council and asked them to cooperate. Lyudmyla Denisova, Ombudsman of Ukraine, stated that the referendum would be illegal because "under Ukrainian law any issues over territory can only be resolved by a nationwide referendum". Later that day, the Kherson Oblast Council passed a resolution stating that the proposed referendum would be illegal.
On 13 March, Ukrayinska Pravda, a Ukrainian newspaper, reported that several thousand people in Kherson took part in a protest. Russian soldiers dispersed the protest with gunfire, stun grenades, and rubber bullets, injuring several people. On the same day, the Russian occupation issued new laws in Kakhovka, Nova Kakhovka and Tavriisk preventing residents from gathering in groups, photographing the Russian military, and possessing weapons. The mayor of Skadovsk was briefly detained on 16 March.
On 22 March, the Ukrainian government warned Kherson was facing a "humanitarian catastrophe" as the city was running out of food and medical supplies and accused Russia of blocking evacuation of civilians to Ukraine-controlled territory. Russia countered by saying that its military helped deliver aid to the city's population. A local journalist stated that there was only a staged event, in which former prisoners from Crimea were brought in to act as locals welcoming the Russians and accepting their assistance. According to several media outlets, residents report intrusive checkpoints, abductions, and Russian looting of shops.
Military-civilian administration
In early April, Russian soldiers tore down the Ukrainian flag at the government administrative building.
On 18 April, Igor Kastyukevich, a Russian politician and deputy of the 8th State Duma, was allegedly appointed by the Russian government as a de facto mayor. Kastyukevich denied these reports.
By 26 April, Russian troops took over Kherson City's administration headquarters and appointed a new mayor, former KGB agent Oleksandr Kobets, and a new civilian-military regional administrator, ex-mayor Vladimir Saldo. The next day, Ukraine's Prosecutor General said that troops used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse a pro-Ukraine protest in the city centre.
On 27 April, the Legislative Assembly of Krasnoyarsk Krai in Siberia approved the expropriation of grain from the Kherson region. Agricultural machinery from the occupied Kherson region was also transported to remote Russian lands, including Chechnya. Lyudmila Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, likened the plan to repeating the Holodomor, a famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The plan was eventually put into action on 30 May, according to Russia. Russian officials were also working on exporting sunflower seeds. According to locals, Russian soldiers were being employed as strawberry pickers in Kherson Oblast.
On 27 April, the Ukrainian Air Force struck the Kherson TV Tower with a missile temporarily forcing Russian television off-air.
In an indication of an intended split from Ukraine, on 28 April the new military-civilian administration announced that from May it would switch the region's currency to the Russian ruble. Additionally, citing unnamed reports that alleged discrimination against Russian speakers, its deputy head, Kirill Stremousov said that "reintegrating the Kherson region back into a Nazi Ukraine is out of the question". On 29 April, Saldo stated that the official languages of the Kherson Oblast would be both Ukrainian and Russian and that the International Settlements Bank from South Ossetia would open 200 branches in Kherson Oblast soon. On 1 May, a four-month plan was adopted for a full transition to rubles. At the same time, the Ukrainian hryvnia was to remain the current currency along with the ruble for four months. On 7 May, a new coat of arms was adopted, based on the 1803 coat of arms of Kherson of the Russian Empire.
On 9 May, an Immortal Regiment event took place in Kherson City, celebrating Victory Day. Soviet-era victory flags and red banners were flown.
On 11 May 2022, Kirill Stremousov announced his readiness to send President Vladimir Putin a request for Kherson Oblast to directly join the Russian Federation without any referendum or creation of an independent "Kherson People's Republic" prior to joining. Commenting on these statements, Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that this issue should be decided by the inhabitants of the region and that "these fateful decisions must have an absolutely clear legal background, legal justification, be absolutely legitimate, as was the case with Crimea".
On 30 May 2022, the Russian-backed occupation authority in Kherson said that it had started exporting last year's grain from Kherson to Russia. They would also be working on exporting sunflower seeds. By June, the occupiers were switching Ukrainian schools to their educational curriculum and Russian SIM cards were on the market. Kolykhaiev witnessed the occupiers distributing Russian passports. A cafe frequented by the occupiers was bombed on 7 June and at least four people were injured.
On 6 June, it was reported by the Ukrainian mayor of Kherson, Ihor Kolykhaiev, that the occupiers had conducted a meeting of more than 70 Russian sympathizers aimed at conducting a referendum on the region integrating the occupied areas into Russia. His sources told him that the dates discussed were two: in September or at the end of 2022. As a Russian election was going to take place on 11 September, the Kherson vote would be scheduled to coincide with that day. An elected official in Russia named Igor Kastyukevich had discussed this plan on 7 June, following the visit to Kherson of Sergei Kiriyenko, the deputy chief of staff of the Russian presidential administration.
On 3 June, the EU stated that it would not recognize any Russian passports issued to Ukrainian citizens in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. On 11 June, according to local officials, the first Russian passports were handed out to citizens in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Region, including local officials such as Vladimir Saldo.
On 24 June, Dmytro Savluchenko, who led the Directorate for Family, Youth, and Sports of the Russian occupation administration, was killed by a car bomb.
On 29 June 2022, Stremousov said that "The Kherson region will decide to join the Russian Federation and become a full-fledged subject as one unified state." On the same visit, Kiriyenko spoke at the United Russia party's humanitarian aid center in Kherson: "The Kherson region's admission into Russia will be complete, similar to Crimea," recalling the 2014 Crimean status referendum. That same day, the Ukrainian mayor of Kherson, Ihor Kolykhaiev, was detained by Russian security forces.
On 5 July, Volodymyr Saldo announced that the former deputy head of government in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Sergei Yeliseyev, a graduate of the FSB Academy, was to assume the presidency of the oblast.
Annexation by Russia and Ukrainian recapture of Kherson City
On 10 July, Iryna Vereshchuk, the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine urged civilians in the Kherson region to evacuate ahead of a future Ukrainian counteroffensive. On 27 July 2022 the surface of a section of the Antonivka Road Bridge was rendered unusable for heavy equipment, by M142 HIMARS attacks. The counteroffensive eventually was announced to have begun on 29 August 2022. They regained territory and liberated villages in northern Kherson Oblast and southern Mykolaiv Oblast gradually throughout September.
On 28 August 2022, the vice-president of the occupation administration (Kovalev) was found shot dead inside his own apartment in Zaliznyi Port. His wife was stabbed in the same attack and she died later in the hospital.
On 30 September 2022, Russia declared it was annexing four Ukrainian oblasts, including Kherson Oblast. The annexation was unrecognized by the international community, with the exception of North Korea and Syria. The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling on countries not to recognise what it described as an "attempted illegal annexation" and demanded that Russia "immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw."
In early October 2022, the Russian defensive lines in the northern parts of the oblast collapsed, leading to more Ukrainian progress. Ukrainian officials said about 1,200 km2 of territory had been recaptured since late August. Deputy head of the Kherson Military-Civilian Administration Kirill Stremousov died in a car crash near Henichesk on 9 November 2022. On 11 November, Ukrainian forces took back the city of Kherson. Following the loss of Kherson in November 2022, the Russian occupation force moved its temporary administrative centre to Henichesk. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the status of the Kherson region as a "subject of the Russian Federation" remained "unchanged" despite the withdrawal.
After being reported missing by her husband Pavel Gubarev, on 16 November 2022 Russian media reported that Ekaterina Gubareva, another deputy head of the administration, had been detained by the Russian police in relation to a corruption case involving embezzlement of public funds and suspended from her current position. Pavel Gubarev later announced on 18 November that Gubareva had been released, without offering further details.