War in Ukraine: How Cherson influences the course of the war

The battle for Cherson is a decisive battle for Ukraine: the area should be back under government control by September. But Russia also has plans for the autumn there.

The local military administration recently announced that the southern Ukrainian city of Cherson and the surrounding area could be liberated from Russian occupation by September. Their adviser Serhiy Chlan even sees a “turning point on the battlefield”: The Ukrainian armed forces switched from the defensive to the counter-offensive.

British and US military observers confirm: In the area around the Dnipro estuary, 30 kilometers from the Black Sea, Ukrainian troops are increasingly threatening the Russian invaders. President Volodymyr Zelenskyj announced that the military was moving into the region “in stages”, rocket hits on important bridges over the Dnipro cut off Russia’s heavy military equipment from supplies, on the outskirts of Cherson more than 1000 Russian soldiers are said to be surrounded.

In the city, which had almost 300,000 inhabitants before the war, everything is now heading towards one of the decisive battles for the further course of the war: Russia is likely to do all it can to maintain the conquered land connection from Donbass to Crimea and from there to others launch offensives to the west. On the other hand, if Ukraine succeeds in recapturing its territory, it can throw Russian troops back behind the Dnipro and halt their advance inland, at least for a while.

Both also want to symbolically demonstrate their superiority at Cherson: Ukraine is trying to keep its promise there that it will never give up its territories and will reward cities that remain loyal to it – and to prove that arms deliveries from the West will help it to more than lengthy delaying battles . Russia, on the other hand, wants to show that it is capable of carrying out its annexation threats – a chance to implement Putin’s historical revisionism, which forms the ideological foundation of the war of aggression.

Rubles, passport issue, propaganda

Almost five months of Russian occupation have already changed the city of Cherson: Mayor Ihor Kolychayev has been deposed and arrested, ex-KGB agent Alexander Kobez and a former fish feed manufacturer named Kirill Stremoussov, who previously appeared as a blogger about corona conspiracy legends, are now in charge and is on the EU sanctions list. In interviews with Russian media, he says that the citizens of Kherson already feel “as subjects of the Russian Federation.”

The ruble is used as a means of payment, companies are confiscated and forced to “re-register”, in the course of which the management has to accept Russian citizenship. Residents of Cherson are also being urged to apply for Russian passports in an urgent procedure – food distribution is said to have been made dependent on this in some cases. Reports of arbitrary arrests, violence against civilians and hundreds of people missing are mounting. For the Victory Day celebration on May 9, USSR flags were said to have been raised and cheering groups of pensioners from Crimea brought to the city, asking each other “Where’s the camera?”

Resistance is only expressed in small gestures: when the Russian flag disappears and the Ukrainian one is hoisted in its place, or when Russian food is boycotted, as one resident of the city said at the beginning of June ARD Studio Moscow reported. Apart from propaganda pictures, hardly anything new has come out of the city since then.

Courageous civil resistance

The people of Cherson in particular impressed many with their courage to resist: in early March, when Russia had conquered the city from Crimea in just one week, large groups of people took to the streets, fixed Ukrainian flags on Russian tanks and shouted loudly : “Kherson belongs to Ukraine!” and “Putin is a sausage!” After days of protests, Russian soldiers shot into the crowd, one person is said to have died.

Selenskyj named Kherson a “hero city” – along with Mariupol, Kharkiv and three other theaters of war. A little later, the Russian National Guard and the FSB secret service moved into quarters there. Since the spring, Russia has been hauling grain and sunflower seeds from the region into its own country on a large scale. But in addition to spoils of war and the strategically favorable location between Crimea and Dnipro, Cherson has a third important meaning for Putin: Here he wants to make an example of his great power fantasies derived from times past.

The “wild field” from 1778

In the first half of September, the collaboration government installed by Russia recently announced that a “referendum” on joining the Russian Federation is to be held in Cherson and nearby Zaporizhia – the formation of electoral commissions to draw up “voter lists” has already begun. Katerina Gubaeva, a member of the collaboration government set up by Russia for the Kherson Oblast, wrote: “The referendum is our chance to step out of the ‘wild field'”.

In the Middle Ages, the steppe landscapes of southern and eastern Ukraine were referred to as “wild field”, in which horsemen and nomadic peoples such as the Zaporozhian Cossacks lived – in Russian history they are portrayed as uncivilized “savages” who were tamed by Russia. The Kherson region was inhabited by Crimean Tatars at that time. Tsarina Catherine the Great conquered the area, subjugated the Cossacks and founded the city of Cherson in 1778.

Now, two and a half centuries later, history is repeating itself, Gubaeva continues: Russia is “building a civilization” on a territory that, in 1991 – the year of Ukrainian independence – was deliberately robbed of its historical memory, its industry and its future. The referendum is there to “give the people back their territory”.

Who can create facts first?

If this reversal of historical facts succeeds, Russia could also draw military strength. “If areas in the south are annexed, the Russian armed forces will continue to advance in the direction of Odessa. Ukraine’s ability to survive would then be immensely impaired,” said Sabine Fischer from the Eastern Europe and Eurasia research group at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik im tagesschau.de-Interview.

Because with Odessa, Ukraine would lose its last access to the Black Sea – and thus to its military and commercial fleet. “You have to remember again and again that ultimately Russia’s overriding war goal is the destruction of the independent Ukrainian state,” emphasizes Fischer. “And the further Russia works its way towards Odessa, the greater this danger becomes.”

A bitter struggle has begun for Russia and Ukraine as to who can be the first to create facts with Kherson by the autumn.