It was the third season of Servant of the People, the mega popular series of Volodymyr Zelensky that helped him win the presidential election in 2019, when his protagonist, an ordinary teacher who by a miracle became a leader of the country, was experiencing a peak in failure. In this third season, Ukraine was divided into dozens of small republics, that were fighting each other. Now the real President, Volodymyr Zelensky, is facing the same challenge.
President Putin is trying to divide Ukraine like a devoted Servant of the People fan: first he annexed the peninsula Crimea in 2014, a month ago he recognized the two pseudo-republics, the Luhansk people’s republic and Donetsk people’s republic in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, and now he is trying to traditionally hold a pseudo-referendum in another region. This time it is the threat of the so-called Kherson people’s republic, which is in my home region.
Kherson, the only region bordering annexed Crimea, was the first region whose administrative center, with a population of around 300,000 was seized by the Russians. Hopefully it will be the only one.
First, the Russians destroyed territorial units formed by the local residents. Video footage of the corpses, which are difficult to identify, was confirmed by local authorities as true. Then they shot at civilian infrastructure: at residential buildings, a school, the largest shopping center, a hospital for patients with mental illness.
Though Kherson has not suffered from shelling as much as eastern cities of Donbas or Kharkiv, it is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. If Putin wanted to resume the USSR he manages to do this by getting people to stand in long lines for half a day for leftovers of not the best quality. Food and medicine shortages are getting worse with every day.
The mayor appealed to Ukrainian authorities and thirteen trucks with necessary things arrived in Kherson from Ukraine. The Russians did not permit the lorries to enter, but brought their aid instead, together with the cameras to make a performance for TV where Russia plays the “savior” to Khersonians.
Russia did not expect people to protest against it. The Russian trucks turned away and left the city with their cargo. Protests have been continuing in the southern city since it was occupied and even after Russia captured 400 protesters. Now, some cars do manage to move inside the region through checkpoints manned by Russian soldiers. The Russian servicemen show no aggression towards elderly people, but check passports and trunks. But people understand they can shoot whenever there is an irritant.
Many women are very afraid. Despite the unconfirmed news, rumors of rapes and murders circulate all the time in social media. Women are asked to stay off the streets. Many do not want to test the veracity of these rumors on themselves.
Fear reigns in the city, but also hope, hope that Ukraine will be able to defend the city in the end, despite the simulacrum of pseudo-referendums and quasi-republics. People write to me saying that they’re most afraid of losing contact with Ukraine, afraid of turning into Donbas.
That is why almost all residents of Kherson are doing their best to let the world see that no-one here wants Russia, the USSR, or other forms of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s crazy fantasy. These ideas are supported by several people who came out to alternative protests with red pro-Russian flags. Their leader is a former mayor of Kherson, from the Party of Regions of the most corrupt former Ukrainian president, Victor Yanukovych, who fled in 2014 to Russia.
Moscow, according to intelligence reports, would like to make him the leader of Ukraine again. Former mayor and ex-member of parliament Volodymyr Saldo had problems with the law and even at one time tried to hide in Latin America because of corruption. People with a criminal past and without a future in a country of strong institutions and transparent legislation make up that category that can support Russia today. Their rallies have hardly gathered a few dozen people and cannot have any effect on Ukrainians, who have made their choice for a European future in thirty years of the country’s independence.
Ukraine has already raised generations who only know about the USSR from books and have no admiration for the country of bad economy and disregard for human life and rights. They are generations of open-minded, cosmopolitan people, ready to build their country on the values of democracy. Russia has never realized that its narratives are as unsuccessfully stale as its leadership.
I spoke with a resident of Kherson today and he said that Putin was destroying the regions with Russian-speaking populations the most because the Kremlin could not imagine that these people might not accept Russia. Because there is no monopoly on languages and no dictatorship that can be imposed on the freedom-loving Ukrainian people.
Putin wanted to use history as justification for waging this war against Ukraine and reviving the USSR. In response, according to one Kherson resident, he received the horror of disappointment that “the army that defeated Nazism in World War II has now turned into fascists itself.”
