City under Russian occupation
Ukraine wants to recapture Kherson
5/8/2022 1:56 am
As in Luhansk and Donetsk, Russia is apparently planning to set up a “people’s republic” in Cherson, Ukraine. But Kyiv wants to prevent that with all means – and announces the plan for a reconquest.
The Ukrainian leadership is counting on recapturing the city of Cherson in the south of the country, which is occupied by Russian troops. “There will be no People’s Republic of Kherson,” said Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Ukrainian radio.
The area will be completely liberated, which will cost the lives of many Russian soldiers, Podoliak said in Kyiv. He was reacting to statements by Moscow politicians and the occupying power that want to declare Cherson Russian.
“Russia is here forever,” Secretary General of the Kremlin’s United Russia party, Andrei Turchak, said during a visit. Russian passports are also to be issued in Cherson, and the ruble is to become the only means of payment. This would be a development similar to that in the self-proclaimed “people’s republics” of the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, which were founded in 2014.
Before the Russian war of aggression, Cherson had around 290,000 inhabitants and is located on the lower reaches of the Dnipro River. In the city, people protest again and again against the Russian occupying power.