Last week, a familiar figure returned to the central square of the seaside town of Henichesk. Dressed in a three-piece suit and with his familiar goat’s beard and mustache, Vladimir Lenin returned to his pedestal. A statue of the Bolshevik leader was erected in front of the city’s main council building. The Russian and Soviet flags fluttered from the roof. All in time for Lenin’s 152nd birthday on Friday.
However, Henichesk is not in Russia. This is – or was until the invasion of Vladimir Putin – a sleepy settlement in southern Ukraine. The city of 20,000 people has a house of culture, a long beach and a Vegas-themed hotel. There are also new imperial lords: the Russians. They arrived from Crimea on February 24 in armored vehicles, passing a gleaming landscape of lagoons and dunes.
One woman was not impressed with “What the hell are you doing here?” She asked an enemy soldier in exchange, filmed on the phone. “You are occupiers! You are fascists! You came to my land uninvited. ” Then she tried to hand him a packet of seeds. “These are so many that sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here. From this moment you are cursed! You’re a piece of shit! ”
Despite the wishes of its inhabitants, Henichesk may soon become part of the so-called “Kherson People’s Republic”. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Moscow plans to hold a fictitious independence referendum in the southern province or province, probably as early as Wednesday. Grateful local voters will express their desire to “break away” from Ukraine.
At least that’s the script. This is the model last used by Moscow in 2014, when it incited and armed pro-Russian separatist riots in the eastern region of Donbass. He organized pseudo-votes in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, both of which became “people’s republics.” The Russian army is now seeking to occupy more Ukrainian territory and expand the “republics”.
Putin’s vague military goals developed last week after his failed attempt to seize Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. There is little talk now about its original goal: to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine and its leadership. Instead, Russian generals speak openly of conquest. The invasion turned into a grand colonial project to change the map of Europe and steal the shores of Ukraine.
The monument to Lenin, which was recently erected in occupied Henichesk. Photo: @EuromaidanPress Twitter
The new obvious goal is to create a land corridor stretching from the separatist east along the Sea of Azov to Crimea. This will include the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Nikolaev, future targets once the battle for Donbass is won. The corridor will connect with Transnistria, a breakaway Soviet-style territory in Moldova that is already home to Russian “peacekeepers.”
Meanwhile, the Kremlin is consolidating control in Henichesk and other southern regions. His tactics are intimidation and cooperation for those who want to serve Russian interests. Ukrainian officials, activists and journalists have been arrested. Some are disappearing. In the town of Kakhovka, hostages were beaten and tortured with electric shocks at a police station, according to Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman.
The new authorities shut down independent media and shut down Ukrainian television. They included Russian propaganda channels broadcasting from Crimea. The message: life has improved with the arrival of Russian forces. “We are in an information vacuum,” said one resident. She added that there was no internet for a week.
Meanwhile, a purge of Ukrainian politicians is underway. The mayor of Henichesk, Alexander Tulupov, was last seen on March 9th. He and his colleagues posed for a photo in the city park next to the statue of Taras Shevchenko, the national poet of Ukraine. It was Shevchenko’s birthday. It is unclear whether the mayor shared the fate of other elected officials who were abducted.
Last month, the Russians hacked Henichesk’s municipal website and announced that Tulupov had “resigned” voluntarily. They replaced him with a new mayor, Gennady Sivak, who has lived in annexed Crimea for eight years. In the occupied city of Kherson, Moscow has appointed Igor Kastyukevich, a Russian lawmaker from Putin’s ruling United Russia party, as mayor.
Residents told the Observer that there was a full-fledged campaign to erase Ukraine’s national identity. Ukrainian flags have been ripped from civilian buildings. In Melitopol, teachers are forced to use Russian and teach according to the Kremlin’s school curriculum. Authorities said some may need to be “retrained” in Crimea. Units of the Russian “military police” are destroying Ukrainian literature and textbooks.
Historian Ann Applebaum said the methods of the Russian government in Ukraine were grimly known. Today’s Moscow reproduces what Soviet forces did in occupied Poland, the Baltic states, and the rest of Central Europe in 1939, as well as at the end of World War II. It was a terribly accurate repetition of the NKVD [Soviet secret police] and the behavior of the Red Army, “she said.
She added: “They have lists of people to be arrested – mayors, museum directors, local leaders of all kinds. They systematically rape and kill civilians to create terror. They are deporting other people en masse to Russia to increase their own depleted population. They eradicate local symbols – statues, flags, monuments – and place their own.
Applebaum said there had been a “new twist” in Russia’s takeover of southern and eastern Ukraine, now the scene of a brutal battle for Donbass. “Since modern Russia is nothing but corruption, nihilism and Putin’s personal power, they returned Soviet flags and statues of Lenin to symbolize Russia’s victory,” she said.
This is the last sighting of Henichesk Mayor Alexander Tulupov, fourth from left, next to a statue of Taras Shevchenko in the city park.
Ukraine removed its statues of Lenin in 2014 after the Maidan revolution. Monuments have disappeared from squares in Kharkiv, Kyiv and elsewhere. Communist slogans were banned under “decommunization” laws passed by the Ukrainian parliament. Henichesk and other occupied areas are now subject to forced “recommunication”. Or, in another way, they return to the USSR.
Yuri Sobolevsky, first deputy chairman of the Kherson regional council, said Russian “orcs” were erecting communist-era monuments and “moving into the past.” This is happening against the backdrop of the deteriorating humanitarian crisis, the strict suppression of dissent and the suppression of anyone who expresses a pro-Ukrainian political position, he said.
He added: “Their motive is absolutely transparent. They are trying to parasitize on the nostalgic moods of the population. The problem is that such almost do not exist in [Kherson] ■ area. Our people live in the present and have a very real and successful future. But the occupiers do not understand. Therefore, the “USSR show” will continue until the Ukrainian armed forces liberate our territory.
Marina, a woman living in the occupied southern port of Berdyansk, said the city’s new masters plan to stage a Red Square-style victory parade on May 9th. “It’s like a terrible dream. I was also a pioneer in the Komsomol [communist youth organisation]. “I don’t miss Lenin,” she said. “Here is the same scenario as in Donbass eight years ago. They haven’t come up with anything new. “
Within hours of arriving, the Russians seized local television and seized its newspaper, she said. They broke into the passport office and stole personal data. The soldiers demanded documents at checkpoints. Z-marked Russian armored vehicles passed regularly, she added. Food was available, but there was almost no medicine in Berdyansk. Humanitarian deliveries from Ukraine-controlled areas have been suspended.
Most southerners have opposed Russia’s takeover, she said. However, the Kremlin has found some locals willing to cooperate. The new “mayor” of Mariupol is a veteran politician from the pro-Russian Opposition Bloc party. Vadim Boychenko, the real mayor, said his counterpart had advised Russians on which infrastructure targets to fire on.
However, cooperation can be dangerous. On Wednesday, Valery Kuleshov, a pro-Russian activist and blogger, was shot dead in Kherson. He had left his unit at 8.15 in the morning and got into his gray Mazda. It is not clear who fired the front of his car with automatic fire. Valery Kim, the mayor of Nikolaev, said it was impossible to stop patriotic citizens from bringing out “traitors”.
For now, residents can try to travel from Russian territories to Ukrainian-controlled territory. There is no guarantee that they will escape. Julia, a woman from Berdyansk, said soldiers had taken her uncle from his car and threatened to shoot him in the knee. “They said he was a Nazi,” she said. Her friend’s doctor’s husband was taken to a checkpoint, she added, and disappeared.
Julia said the popular “mood is against Russia.” This was especially true among young people. However, she acknowledged that Russian television was beginning to influence retirees raised in the Soviet Union. “My husband’s grandfather told us that the Russians were not bombing Kharkiv. He was watching the Russian news. It was difficult to convince him that this was a lie, “she said.
It seems that the Kremlin does not plan to leave southern Ukraine soon. A new stamp used by Berdyansk’s “military-civil administration” says the port is part of “Russia”. There are plans to replace the Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia, with the ruble – and, ominously, to forcibly recruit troops to fight on the Russian side against the Ukrainian army.
In his latest video address, President Zelenski called on residents in the occupied areas to “cause problems” and …
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