The Kremlin said it could include the important Kherson region

The Kremlin signaled on Wednesday that it could include the strategically important region of southern Ukraine from Khersonas the occupation authorities said they would prepare a formal request to the president Vladimir Putin to capture their region in Russia.

A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, Journalists were told Wednesday that “Kherson residents must decide” whether to join Russia, months after the city of Kherson, with a pre-war population of about 290,000, became the first major city in the autumn after of the attack on February 24.

“Such lethal decisions must have a completely clear legal basis and position, be completely legitimate, as happened in the case of Crimea,” said Peskov, referring to the region illegally annexed by Russia. from Ukraine in 2014, just hours after that 97. % Of voters there approved a referendum that was criticized as fraudulent.

Peskov, asked if his statement that Kherson residents should decide their fate means Russia plans to hold a referendum there, said:

“I already said what I wanted to say. I said nothing about a referendum. “

The effort to formally integrate the region came as Russian forces stepped up repressive efforts in Kherson to repeal its Ukrainian identity and bring it firmly within the sphere of Moscow’s influence amid a series of protests by local residents.

Russian forces imposed a moving in Russian rubles in early May and raised Russian flags on government buildings, according to videos and photos taken in the streets.

The Kherson region has deep strategic importance:

Here the mighty Dnieper River flows into the Black Sea, and it is the source of a Soviet -era canal that supplied water to the Crimea.

The Kremlin’s interest in the region shows that Russia’s war goals extend beyond the Donbas, the region in eastern Ukraine where the Russian military has focused their offensive on the ground and where Putin has wrongly said it was necessary. of Russian speakers. protection.

Unlike the annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin appears to be laying the groundwork to seize control of the Kherson region without even holding a referendum.

Kirill Stremousov, who was appointed by Russian forces as deputy head of the Kherson region in April, said on Wednesday that the incumbent “military-civilian administration” planned to ask Putin to declare his region part of Russia in a stroke.

“This will be a unique mandate based on the appeal of the leaders of the Kherson region to Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Stremousov said at a news conference on Wednesday, according to Russia’s state news agency Tass.

Stremousov also said in recent days that Kherson “will be included in the Russian Federation as much as possible” and that residents “have the right to obtain citizenship of Russia and Russian passports “.

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, dismissed the idea that the Kherson occupation authorities could apply to join Russia, saying “the occupiers could apply to join even on Mars or Jupiter“.

“The Ukrainian Army will liberate Kherson,” he said on Twitter, “no matter what puns they play.”

the president of ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky Russia is accused of planning to hold a fake referendum in Kherson to strengthen it not legitimate governmentsimilar to the so -called “people’s republics” established by Moscow -backed separatists in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of eastern Ukraine.

Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, warned this month that Russia plans to hold “fake” elections in Donetsk and Luhansk in mid -May, followed by a similar referendum in Kherson .

“It’s straight into the Kremlin playbook,” Carpenter told reporters at the State Department.

Russia’s takeover of Kherson was met with widespread protest and street protests from local residents.

Some residents were forced to flee to nearby Ukrainian -controlled cities such as Odessa and Kryvyi Rih.

The governor of the region, Hennadii Lahuta, estimated on Tuesday that almost Half the population he has been gone since March.

Witness accounts released in Kherson describe an increasingly repressive environment, where Russian soldiers are everywhere in shops and on street corners, passing phones and kidnapping journalists, the leader said. of the community, local council members and activists.

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