Place:Kherson, Kherson, Kherson, Ukraine

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Kherson is the administrative centre of Kherson Oblast in the south of Ukraine, and it is a major economic centre. Kherson is an important port on the Black Sea and on the Dnipro River, and the home of a major ship-building industry. It is the centre of Kherson Raion and hosts the administration of Kherson urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine.

Since March 2022, the city has been occupied by Russian forces during its invasion of the country as part of the Kherson military–civilian administration. , it had a population of The great majority, according to the last (2001) census, were ethnically Ukrainian. The Ukrainian authorities estimate that since the invasion 45% of inhabitants have fled the city.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Foundation and etymology

The city was founded by decree of Catherine the Great on 18 June 1778 on the high bank of the Dnieper as a central fortress of the Black Sea Fleet after the Russian annexation of the territory in 1774. The first new settlement in the "Greek project" of Empress Catherine and her favorite Grigory Potemkin, it was named after the ancient Greek city-colony of Chersonesus in Crimea. In Greek, means "peninsular shore".

Imperial port

1783 saw the city granted the rights of a district town and the opening of a local shipyard where the hulls of the Russian Black Sea fleet were laid. Within a year the Kherson Shipping Company began operations. By the end of the 18th century, the port had established trade with France, Italy, Spain and other European countries. In 1783–1793 also Poland's maritime trade via the Black Sea was conducted through Kherson by Kompania Handlowa Polska. In 1791, Potemkin was buried in the newly built St. Catherine's Cathedral. In 1803 the city became the capital of the Kherson Governorate.

Industry, beginning with breweries, tanneries and other food and agricultural processing, developed from the 1850s.

In 1897 the population of the city was 59,076 of which, on the basis of their first language, almost half were recorded as Great Russian, 30% as Jewish, and 20% "Little Russian" or Ukrainian.

During the revolution of 1905 there were workers' strikes and an army mutiny (an armed demonstration by soldiers of the 10th Disciplinary Battalion) in the city.

Soviet era

In the wake of their 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks forced from Kiev the Tsentralna Rada which had a declared the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR). But before they could secure Kherson, they ceded the region under the terms of the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the German-controlled Ukrainian State. After the withdrawal of German forces in November 1918, the efforts of the UPR (the Petluirites) to assert authority were frustrated by a French-led Allied intervention which occupied Kherson in January 1919.

In March 1919, the Green Army of local warlord Ataman Nikifor Grigoriev ("Matviy Hryhoriyiv") ousted the French and Greek garrison and precipitated the Allied evacuation from Odesa. In July, the Bolsheviks defeated Grigoriev who had called upon the Ukrainian people to rise against the "Communist imposters" and their "Jewish commissars," and had perpetrated pogroms,^[1] including in the Kherson region. Kherson itself was occupied by the counter-revolutionary Whites before finally falling to the Bolshevik Red Army in February 1920.^[2] In 1922 the city and region was formally incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR a constituent republic of the Soviet Union.

The population was radically reduced from 75,000 to 41,000 by the famine of 1921–3, but then rose steadily, reaching 97,200 in 1939. In 1940, the city was one of the sites of executions of Polish officers and intelligentsia committed by the Soviets as part of the Katyn massacre. Further devastation and population loss resulted from the German occupation during the Second World War. The German occupation, which lasted from August 1941 to March 1944, contended with both Soviet and Ukrainian nationalist (OUN) underground cells. The Kherson district leadership of the OUN was headed by Bogdan Bandera (brother of OUN leader Stepan Bandera). The Germans operated a Nazi prison and the Stalag 370 prisoner-of-war camp in the city.

In the post-war decades, which saw substantial industrial growth, the population more than doubled, reaching 261,000 by 1970. The new factories, including the Comintern Shipbuilding and Repairs Complex, the Kuibyshev Ship Repair Complex, and the Kherson Cotton Textile Manufacturing Complex (one of the largest textile plants in the Soviet Union), and Kherson's growing grain-exporting port, drew in labour from the Ukrainian countryside. This changed the city's ethnic composition, increasing the Ukrainian share from 36% in 1926 to 63% in 1959, while reducing the Russian share from 36 to 29%. The Jewish population never recovered from the Holocaust visited by the Germans: accounting for 26% of residents in 1926, their number had fallen to just 6% in 1959.^[3]

Independent Ukraine

With a turnout of 83.4% of eligible voters, 90.1% of the votes cast in Kherson Oblast affirmed Ukrainian independence in the national referendum of 1 December 1991.

Following Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, Kherson housed the office of the Ukrainian President's representative in Crimea.

Until 18 July 2020, Kherson was incorporated as a city of oblast significance and the centre of Kherson Municipality. The municipality was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Kherson Oblast to five. The area of Kherson Municipality was merged into newly established Kherson Raion.

In the last free elections before the 2022 Russian invasion, the Ukrainian local elections held on 25 October 2020, the results of Kherson City Council elections were as follows:

We have to live here!: 23.10% of the vote, 17 seats

Opposition Platform — For Life: 14.51%, 11 seats

Servant of the People: 13.01%, 10 seats

Volodymyr Saldo Bloc: 11.76%, 9 seats

European Solidarity: 8.59%, 7 seats

The parties widely perceived as pro-Russian, and Euro-skeptic, Opposition Platform, Volodymyr Saldo Bloc, and Party of Shariy (3.89%) had a combined vote of just over 30% of the total, and secured 20 out of the 54 seats on the city council. In the wake of the invasion, the Opposition Platform and the Party of Shariy were banned by the national Security Council because of alleged ties with Russia. The Volodymyr Saldo Bloc dissolved; its deputies in Kyiv joined the newly formed faction "Support to the programs of the President of Ukraine".

Russian occupation

Kherson witnessed heavy fighting in the first days of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (Kherson offensive). As of 2 March the city was reported to be under Russian control, and as early as 8 March the Russian FSB was reported to be tasked with crushing resistance.

Under the Russian occupation, locals continued to stage street protests against the invading army's presence and in support of the unity of Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian government, the Russian military sought to create a puppet Kherson People's Republic in the style of the Russian-backed separatist polities in the Donbas region and tried to coerce local councillors into endorsing the move, detaining those activists and officials who opposed their design.

On 26 April 2022, both local authorities and Russian state media reported that Russian troops had taken over the city's administration headquarters and had appointed both a new mayor,^[4] former KGB agent Alexander Kobets, and a new civilian-military regional administrator, ex-mayor Volodymyr Saldo. The next day, Ukraine's Prosecutor General said that troops used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse a further pro-Ukraine rally in the city centre. In an indication of an intended split from Ukraine, on the 28th the new administration announced that from May it would switch the region's payments to the Russian ruble. Citing unnamed reports about alleged discrimination of Russian speakers, its deputy head, Kirill Stremousov said that "reintegrating the Kherson region back into a Nazi Ukraine is out of the question".

On 30 May the Russian backed occupation authority in Kherson claims that it has started exporting last year's grain from Kherson to Russia. They are also working on exporting sunflower seeds.

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.^[5] A Russian election happens on 11 September and the Kherson vote would be scheduled to coincide that day.^[6] 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.^[5] By June, the occupiers were switching Ukrainian schools to their educational curriculum and Russian SIM cards were on the market. Kolykhaev witnessed the occupiers distributing Russian passports. A cafe frequented by the occupiers was bombed on 7 June and at least four people were injured. Stremousov said on 29 June 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.

On 18 June it was announced that Russian FSB officers were in process of moving from hotels to apartments that had been vacated by Ukrainians.

In late June the first Russian bank opened in Kherson,^[7] while Alexei Kovalev, an ex-member of the Ukrainian Servant of the People party, survived an assassination attempt.^[8]

On 24 June Dmytro Savluchenko, who led the Directorate for Family, Youth, and Sports of the Russian occupation administration, was assassinated by the explosion of a car bomb.

On 29 June the Ukrainian mayor of Kherson, Kolykhaev, was detained by Russian security forces.

On 5 July it was announced by Stremousov^[8] that Sergei Yeliseyev, until then the deputy head of government in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, was to assume the presidency of the oblast, while Kovalev was appointed vice-president.^[8]

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