This document describing the situation in the occupied Kherson was found on Telegram, shared by the neo-nazi group “Rusich” which is taking part in the war in Ukraine. The original can be found here: https://telegra.ph/Strah-i-nenavist-v-Hersone-09-06

The post mentions the contempt of locals resident of Kherson towards invaders, and we presume the author is one of the Russian military given their mention of wearing camouflage. We added some comments with clarifications to the text.

It is difficult to put together all the thoughts and impressions of Kherson.

 

In a military sense, everything is fine there, the VDV at the front are working as they should, they have enough equipment and everything they need (when compared with the impoverished army of the Donetsk direction), and order and discipline reign along the entire front line. Any issue is resolved according to the rules, but very quickly because communication has been established and each military man has a clear understanding of his rights and obligations, which nullifies the “watchman syndrome”.

The author forgets to mention their own Russian military reporters who say neither artillery nor aviation in the area is operating with any level of efficiency.

In the city of Kherson itself, you feel like an English officer in a newly captured India. Local residents consider us occupiers, although, unfortunately, we do not show any signs of occupation, but I think it would be worth it.

 

The local population on the streets mostly thumps and begs. Beggars in Kherson are not only homeless people and marginal alcoholics living on the streets but also completely ordinary people. Middle-class kids find it normal to walk up and ask a passerby for ice cream. The locals lack courtesy and a culture of communication, they simply ask “Give”, without using the word “please”.

The contempt for the locals here is beyond belief.

At the same time, there are employment centers in Kherson, there is enough work, but people simply do not want to do anything. Russia’s position is to pay pensions in rubles, to give benefits and all sorts of bonuses, but, unfortunately, this does not in any way stimulate the recovery of the region’s economy. Instead, we just feed the freeloaders who think they are owed everything.

 

In Kherson there is water, gas, electricity, communications, almost complete security, the shops have absolutely all the goods from the assortment of Russian supermarkets. Medicine with the advent of Russia became free, Russian pensions are almost four times higher than Ukrainian ones. How do Kherson crests react to this? Hatred. Undisguised public hatred.

There are no jobs in Kherson. People are leaving the area. It was Ukraine that was paying pensions up until very recently when Russians disabled access to the internet and banks.

The food in the shops is of much poorer quality than Ukrainian while much more expensive.

In the early morning of August 24, I was drinking coffee in the square and heard the janitor shouting “Alena, Mashaa! Happy holiday!”. The locals are not shy of calling people in camouflage or Z T-shirts “Fucking Orcs”, in the supermarket in response to my phrase “I beg your pardon” (I asked to let me through to the window) a local sow with a hohol child responds with a haughty look at the camouflage and the phrase “Yes, beg for forgiveness.”

 

The impunity of such behavior is the cornerstone problem of Kherson’s integration.

 

Kherson hohols are cowardly, so they don’t take any special actions, mainly fighting with the help of Ukrainian graffiti and whining on social networks, but there are enough sabotage groups in the city and every week they blow up the cars of Russians. We had to remove reg plates from our car and check underneath it every hour, walking in the city alone is strictly not recommended. An open pro-Russian stance in Kherson today requires either real courage or desperate recklessness, most of the people who support Russia simply do not express their views in public, fearing censure or violence from their fellow countrymen.

We presume this individual might be somewhat overinflating the Kherson residents’ cowardice given he is afraid of having a bomb planted under his car.

All the agitation in the city is trying to please the Ukrainians, people in “vyshyvankas” flaunt on the banners, they are promised various benefits and handouts by joining Russia. But this does not in any way motivate them to join Russia. Their Ukrainianness is irrational and not a sober logical choice.

 

The eight-year zombification of the Ukrainian population is bearing fruit, people simply do not turn on their minds, because they were consistently weaned from rational thinking with the help of violence. This is a topic for a separate study, but examples of such psychological aberration are seen everywhere. For the first time in six months of the war, an old woman from front-line Snigirevka received a huge Russian pension by her standards, and the first thing she asked us was how to exchange it for hryvnias. Although you can’t really buy anything in her district for hryvnia, it’s unprofitable. However, the hryvnia is still in use and in a big city it has not yet been possible to get rid of it.

 

In Kherson, a single hryvnia exchange rate of 1.5 rubles has been introduced, but it is not respected by almost any cafe or restaurant. They all work in their own way. This could be easily fixed in a day or two, but the local authorities just shrug their shoulders and dine in the same cafes, overpaying one and a half or two times.

So the temporary authorities are attempting to appeal to the locals by using Ukrainian symbols while suggesting life in Russia would be better? We agree this is a failure of propaganda.

As for money, there are so few rubles in the area they are practically useless, and people keep hryvnas hoping for Ukraine to return.

All this happens to the accompaniment of street musicians performing the song of Ukraine from Eurovision 2022.

 

At the moment, our policy in Kherson is a failure and it will result in the loss of the city for us if we do not stop chewing snot and do not introduce a number of measures:

• All Ukrainian de-Russification laws (quotas for music on the radio, language ban, quotas for books, laws on education, etc.) should be enacted in the opposite direction. These people were beaten with sticks for 8 years and imprisoned for the tricolor on the glass of a car. If someone thinks that after that they can be Russified back without violence with the help of persuasion – he is a moron, nullifying all the achievements of the SMO.

• The hryvnia should be withdrawn from circulation and banned. The remaining hryvnia must be exchanged at the rate of 1:1 and burned, as was done in Donetsk. Serious criminal liability should be introduced for setting one’s own course, which differs from the official one.

• Public Ukrainian propaganda (graffiti, slogans, statements) should be criminalized.

• Destruction of terrorists and saboteurs should be widely covered in the press.

 

These measures are not bloodthirsty, they do not even half correspond to the measures that the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian society have introduced in the occupied territories of historical Russia. This is simply a necessity, if you decide to return your lands back, then there will be no order without a hard hand.