C T Online Desk: The Kremlin signalled on Wednesday that it could annex the strategically important southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, as the occupying authorities said they would prepare a formal request to President Vladimir Putin to absorb their region into Russia.
A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry S Peskov, told reporters on Wednesday that “the residents of Kherson should decide” whether to join Russia, months after the city of Kherson, with a prewar population of about 290,000, became the first major city to fall to Russian forces after the invasion on Feb 24.
“Such fateful decisions must have absolutely clear legal grounds and standing — be completely legitimate just as it was in the case of Crimea,” Peskov said, referring to the region that Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, just hours after 97% of voters there approved a referendum criticised as fraudulent.
Peskov, asked whether his statement that Kherson residents should decide their fate meant that Russia planned to hold a referendum there, said: “I said what I wanted to say. I said nothing about a referendum.”
The effort to formally incorporate the region comes as Russian forces have stepped up repressive efforts in Kherson to quash its Ukrainian identity and to bring it firmly into Moscow’s sphere of influence amid a flurry of protests by local residents. Russian forces enforced a transition to the Russian rouble at the beginning of May and have raised Russian flags over government buildings, according to videos and photographs taken from the streets.
The Kherson region carries deep strategic significance: It is where the mighty Dnieper River flows into the Black Sea, and it is the source of a Soviet-era canal supplying water to Crimea. The Kremlin’s interest in the region shows that Russia’s war aims extend well beyond Donbas, the eastern Ukrainian region where the Russian military has focused its ground offensive and where Putin falsely claimed Russian speakers were in need of protection.
Unlike the annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin appears to be laying the groundwork to take control of the Kherson region without even staging a referendum. Kirill Stremousov, who was installed by Russian forces as deputy head of the Kherson region in April, said on Wednesday that the occupying “military-civilian administration” planned to call on Putin to declare their region part of Russia with the stroke of a pen.
