At the end of October, representatives of the occupation administration of Kherson oblast said that they plan to remove about 50–60 thousand residents from 4 right-bank residential neighbourhoods of the oblast to the left bank of the Dnieper and to russia in connection with the preparation of the counter-attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. russians intimidate local residents who already live in an information vacuum, under difficult socio-economic conditions and under constant psychological pressure from the occupiers. The latters say: the Ukrainian military will bomb cities, there will be no water and power in the houses, and therefore it is necessary to "evacuate" as soon as possible. Thus, russian propaganda discredits the Ukrainian army, which, unlike the armed forces of the rf, do not storm the city "head-on" and do not shell civilian infrastructure.
On November, 9 , russian Defense Minister, sergej shoigu, announced that Russian troops were coming from the right bank of Kherson region and would take up the defense positions on the left of the Dnieper River. However, this event should be perceived in a low key, since Russian plans can be insidious attempting to force the Ukrainian troops to hastily advance on Kherson.
These days, OPORA has talked anonymously with people who have recently left the occupied Kherson oblast and know how the announced deportation of the population is carried out, and how it is poorly disguised as an "evacuation".
The scale of “evacuation”
The fact that the “evacuation” is taking place has been confirmed to OPORA by Pavlo (name changed for security reasons). He has recently left the occupied territories but continues to maintain contact with his family and friends still living in the region. However, according to him, people are reluctant to leave, and most of the remaining people are negative about the "evacuation" and are waiting for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to come.
“I would not call it (evacuation — ed.) massive, as many people refuse to leave. Moreover, even numerous collaborators refuse to leave. There are categories of people who are forced by the occupiers to evacuate. First of all, they are administrators and staff of the occupation administration. The 'Tavriya' TV channel controlled by the 'authorities' was also evacuated. There were reports that the occupiers are evacuating the police from Kherson and pupils of children's boarding schools,”— says Pavlo.
According to him, the occupiers said that as of the end of October they had relocated 20,000 people. Assuming the number is true, it still accounts for less than a fifth of all residents staing in the right-bank Kherson region.
The first group of "evacuees" was taken to the areas in russian Krasnodar Territory and to the occupied Crimea. Now people are mostly settled on the territory of the Genichesk district, on the left bank of the Dnieper River. However, the living conditions are very poor. OPORA was told about this by Lubomyr (name changed for security reasons) who has also recently left the occupied territories but still has family members there.
“The first group was taken to the russian city of Anapa. In addition, people from the right bank of Dnipro have been placed in Genichesk district of Kherson region. Recently, the occupation administration of the district summoned entrepreneurs and hotel owners. The meeting's agenda included a question of accommodation of inhabitants from Kherson. In other words, they are no longer taken to russia but they plan to accomodate them in recreation centers on the shores of the Sea of Azov. However, the sanatoriums are absolutely not adapted for people to live in winter time," says Lubomyr.
In Anapa, the situation is no better. Our interviewee quoted his friend who relocated to that city: "People are not promised anything, they have been placed in a sanatorium. As of yet, meals are brought by the volunteers. The premises of the sanatorium are not adapted for winter season. There's no heating. People left without any warm clothes because they were told that the trip would be short.”
Also, according to Lubomyr, people are now settled in Skadovsk but not everyone is happy about it. Supporters of the occupiers were promised that they would be taken to russia but it never happened. They were unhappy because they had different expectations.
Another problem that Lubomyr focuses on is the food supply for the "evacuees". On the one hand, no markets operate in the resort area in winter time. On the other hand, most russian soldiers are supposed to self-provide, and their numbers have increased recently. That is why they sweep food from the shelves of the stores. As a result, prices rose significantly. Lubomyr also doubts that volunteers or occupation administrations would be involved in the delivery of food.
Another challenge is about the “evacuation” of children. Lubomyr says that in the Genichesk and Novotroitsk communities, parents were offered to send their kids for a few weeks to the occupied Crimea and to the russian Krasnodar Territory, for rehabilitation. Some parents agreed but now they cannot bring their children back home. Instead, parents are asked to send over warm clothes. This information has also been confirmed by Pavlo. According to him, the collaborators did not send their children to such "wellness trips".
How occupation administrations communicate about "evacuation"
Our interviewees said that the main reasoning line the occupiers use to motivate the "evacuation" is a potential counterattack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They claim that bombing will allegedly bring destruction, disruption in water supply, in electricity supply, there will be no heating or communications signals. At the same time, the occupiers left Kherson in complete information isolation, having dismantled equipment for mobile communications and the Internet. However, Pavlo is convinced the occupiers use the "evacuation" also to cover the rotation of their troops from the left to the right bank and vice versa.
Occupation administrations, Pavlo says, call for "evacuation" through controlled media and Telegram channels. They share this information from loudspeakers, call local people on mobile phones and send text messages.
Pavlo also argues that the occupation administrations cannot explain to people where they will be taken and when they will be able to return home, offering not even the provisional dates. And this kills the trust. Our interviewee suggests that collaborators from the occupation administrations may not know the answers to those questions themselves. Their russian curators gave them the task but did not tell about the details of their plan, if any.
This opinion is also confirmed by Lubomyr. According to him, people are reluctant to agree to leave, and the occupiers cannot even produce a normal propaganda TVstory that could show the purported mass departure of people. In the video, TV crews showed a boat crossing which is used by residents of local summer cottages to go from the right to the left bank. They presented this process as the "evacuation".
Lubomyr says that the occupiers encourage people to relocate by offering to them housing certificates and one-time financial support. However, the money offered could only suffice for some property deep in the russian periphery, in the middle of nowhere, so few people are interested in the offer.
Monument are “gone” but the military -?
Pavlo claims that he does not see any signs of russian troops leaving the right bank, although he said that in some places they have really become fewer. Perhaps the occupiers are deliberately trying to convince the Armed Forces of Ukraine that the russian army is retreating from Kherson. In fact, though, they are preparing a trap for the Ukrainian military.
Our interviewee says that new military units from different regions of russia keep arriving to the right bank of the Dnieper River. For example, according to Pavlo, there are a lot of Buryat-ethnicity people found in Kherson now. In Beryslav district, too, new soldiers have arrived, who were immediately labeled as "earth orcs" by the locals because they were all very dirty, as if they had crawled out of the ground. Then they disappeared, and "Kadyrov fighters" arrived instead. Pavlo said that according to his data, the number of russian military personnel has significantly increased on the left bank of Kherson, since September.
Lubomyr was not able to confirm, either, that the russian military were coming from the right bank. According to him, Kherson was left by russian institutions that opened in the city after the occupation, such as banks and supermarkets. The russian tricolor flag disappeared from the premises of the Kherson regional state administration. The occupiers also take away cultural values. In particular, they stole from Kherson the monument to Potemkin and his remains, and dismantled the monument to Suvorov. In addition, the occupiers plan to take out of the city the regional library, the museum of local lore, and the art gallery.
In the village of Zelenivka, located next to Kherson, the occupiers stole all public transport vehicles. There is no public transport in Kherson, and public transportation is provided exclusively by private minibuses. This has also been confirmed by the head of the military administration of Kherson, Maryna Lugova. She said that the occupiers plundered the municipal property of the city, leaving it without ambulances and devastating the rolling stock of municipal utility companies.
Kherson region rejects rubles
At the end of October, some news started circulating online that Kherson entrepreneurs, awaiting the arrival of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, refuse to accept russian rubles, and now demand to pay for their goods only in UAH. Before that, entrepreneurs were forced to accept russian rubles, along with Ukrainian hryvnia. Both interviewees confirmed to OPORAthe information about rejection of russian currency.
Pavlo said that people on the right and left banks of Kherson oblast did not welcome the attempts to introduce payments in rubles. In general, there is not much money supply of this currency in the region. Many residents do not have rubles at all. The only exceptions are people who receive russian pensions or charitable assistance but they also mostly try to buy hryvnia immediately. In addition, according to Pavlo, whereas earlier it was difficult to withdraw hryvnia from the cards (local “money changers” charged 30% of commission fees for the service), since September, the situation has changed. Now they themselves pay people 10% extra to encourage people to withdraw hryvnia from them.
Lubomyr says that gas stations and stores flatly refuse to accept rubles. Entrepreneurs also offer an option where you can pay for the product by transferring funds from card to card. People are already used to using the Internet through VPN services. According to Lubomyr, many elderly people who have rubles try to spend them quickly, while saving hryvnias. Also, the man tells, local call russian currency notes the "candy wrappers".
Mobilization has not been announced yet but the occupiers are creating the “territorial defense” units
On October, 19, vladimir putin signed a decree on the formation of territorial defense units in the occupied territories of Ukraine, in particular in Kherson region. In a few days, the occupation administration of the region announced the recruitment of men to those formations. According to Volodymyr Saldo, a gauleiter of Kherson oblast, the occupiers plan to engage 1,500 people to the territorial defense units.
OPORA communicated with our informers before Saldo's statements about the plans to recruit Kherson citizens. At the time of the conversation, they did not observe any steps in that direction. Pavlo said that there were rumors spread in the region that men were being “caught” in Donetsk and Luhansk in Kherson oblast but he did not find any facts to confirm that information. However, due to the fact that some gauleiters threatened to start forced mobilization to the russian army, many men left to avoid fighting against their fellow citizens. Lubomyr added that for many, a sham referendum was another pretext for leaving. As we can see, the collaborators, without even planning it, contributed to making people take those threats seriously and avoiding potential forceful mobilization.
At the same time, as representatives of occupation administrations need to deliver the results, they could possibly resort to forced mobilization. To avoid negative perceptions, they covered it under the sign of “territorial defense units.” It is a common thing for kremlin offices not to call things their real names, as the war was labelled as a "special operation," or the mobilization was termed as "partial," and their failures were presented as "acts of goodwill."
Key Take-Aways
The occupiers are unlikely to be able to carry out a full-fledged mobilization or a successful "evacuation" in the Kherson region. And there are several reasons to that. First, people will not join the occupation army, and when they are forced to fight for the russians at gunpoint, they will surrender as soon as the occasion offers. Secondly, the “evacuation” is now sluggish. Kherson residents are waiting for the Armed Forces of Ukraine and vividly demonstrate this, such as, by rejecting russian rubles. Thirdly, the Ukrainian army is already around, and although this does not mean that the region is liberated any day now, the de-occupation will definitely take place. The bravery of Ukrainians, especially those who stay in the russia-seized territories, deserves to have the war end in a just way — with the victory of Ukraine.
This publication was prepared within the framework of the project "Civil Society for Ukraine's Post-war Recovery and EU-Readiness", which is implemented with the financial support of the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of the Civil Network OPORA and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.