Kherson appeals for Russia to annex region Pussy Riot leader flees Moscow in disguise
RUSSIAN collaborators in Kherson, southern Ukraine, will ask Vladimir Putin to annex the region in what would be Russia’s first official land-grab since the start of the war.
Kirill Stremousov, the Russiainstalled deputy head of the Kherson administration, also said that a referendum to secede from Ukraine into a Kherson People’s Republic – similar to the two pro-russia rebel regions in Donbas – had been scrapped.
Thousands of people have fled Kherson since Russian soldiers took control, and the admission that the region won’t bother with a referendum, unlike Crimea in 2014 which did, suggests that even the collaborationist authorities know they would lose a vote so badly it would be too difficult to fix.
“This will be one single decree based on the appeal of the leadership of the Kherson region to the president of the Russian Federation, and this will include the region inside the Russian Federation,” Mr Stremousov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti, a Russian state-owned news agency.
He suggested that the Russian-backed authorities would appeal directly to Mr Putin without a vote because the international community had roundly rejected Moscow’s takeover of Crimea.
But the Kremlin appeared to pour cold water on that idea, saying it was up to the residents of Kherson to “determine their own fate”.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s chief spokesman, said: “Such fateful decisions must have a legal background, a legal justification in order to be completely legitimate, as was the case with Crimea.”
Kherson was the first region in Ukraine to fall to Russia after Mr Putin ordered his invasion on Feb 24, and represents by far the biggest gains made by the Russian army.
Mr Putin justified his invasion by saying that it was a mission to rescue Ukrainians from Nazis, not to conquer Ukraine, and for the first month of its occupation Ukrainian flags flew above administrative buildings in Kherson.
But as Russia’s army got bogged down the Kremlin’s language hardened against Ukrainians and so did its crackdown in Kherson.
Ukrainian officials have said that about 40 per cent of the city of Kherson’s 240,000 inhabitants have fled, and those that have remained have talked of increasingly harsh repression, a network of informers, the introduction of the Russian school curriculum, the Russian rouble and Russian flags. There have also been multiple accounts of Russian soldiers raping women.
Through a social media channel, people in Kherson said they had no interest in being part of Russia.
“Ukrainians and the whole world do not recognise this. We will fight the occupation by military means. If they succeed, there will be destruction and lawlessness,” said Dymtro. “Protesting can no longer be done safely. Russians shoot protesters.”
THE leader of the Russian activist band Pussy Riot fled Moscow dressed as a food courier after criticising Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Maria Alyokhina, a long-time critic of the president, was under house arrest for her political activism and was set to spend 21 days in a penal colony.
She evaded the police who were monitoring her, left her mobile behind to avoid being tracked and was driven to the Belarussian border by a friend, she told The New York Times.
It took her another week to cross into Lithuania with the help of an Icelandic artist, who secured her travel documents from a European country.
The documents were smuggled into Belarus for her and essentially gave her the same status as a EU citizen, allowing her to enter Lithuania.
She made her escape in three-inch high black boots without laces, in a nod to her frequent stints in jail, where shoelaces are confiscated.
“I was happy that I made it, because it was an unpredictable and big kiss-off to the Russian authorities,” Alyokhina said, comparing the tale to a “spy novel”.
“I still don’t understand completely what I’ve done,” she added.
Alyokhina and the rest of her punk band came to global attention when they staged an anti-putin protest at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral in 2012.
As a result, the band’s members were sentenced to two years in prison.
The group has continued its activism and Alyokhina has been jailed repeatedly on politically motivated charges. In 2013, she co-founded Mediazona, a news website that focuses on human rights abuses in Russia’s judicial and penal systems.
But Alyokhina and Pussy Riot have faced increasingly harsh punishments in recent months as the Kremlin cracks down on dissent over the war in Ukraine. “They are scared because they cannot control us,” she said.
Tens of thousands of Russians have fled their homeland since the invasion of Ukraine. Among them are Alyokhina’s girlfriend and bandmate Lucy Shtein and several other Pussy Riot members.
Shtein, who also fled by sneaking out in a delivery uniform, said she left a month ago after someone posted a sign on the front door of the home she shares with Alyokhina, accusing them of being traitors.
Alyokhina and her fellow bandmates plan to tour to raise money for Ukraine, beginning on May 12 in Berlin.
“I don’t think Russia has a right to exist anymore,” she said. “Even before, there were questions about how it is united, and where it is going. But now I don’t think that is a question anymore.”
‘We will fight the occupation by military means. If they succeed, there will be destruction and lawlessness’