False equivalence.
Look at the last election held in Kherson. We know it was majority Russian, and we know it welcomed the Russian federation forces in without putting up much of a fight.
Russia picked a Rashist former journalist to be the civilian administrator. The same guy, two years earlier, got a thumping 1.8% of the popular vote.
Unsurprisingly, it turns out he’s an incompetent, corrupt leader who’s handing over emptied houses and the possessions in them to Russian settlers while the city ran empty of food and medical supplies.
There is growing partisan action... Led by Russian Ukrainians who think of him as a guy who single handedly betrayed the Russian people in what should’ve been a very civilised handover.
The idea that being a Russian leaning, Russian speaker in a predominantly Russified town automatically makes you a good and popular leader in a separatist area is demented. That’s like saying RINOs are popular in MAGA.
Russia actively seeks out the most corrupt people to run those towns, after years of those people bending over backwards to get rid of the corruption.
They didn’t agree to Russian control in order to swap pockets of Ukrainian corruption in city hall (without a hugh body count) for rampant Russian corruption, bloodbath and endemic thievery.
Russia deliberately imposed it on them.
And if it’d do that to a FRIENDLY city that practically let them in without firing a shot, what do you think Russian control looks like in areas that resisted?
So check your facts. 70% of the southern oblasts were of either Russian ethnic descent or spoke fluent Russian. No more than 5% of the southern oblasts would’ve voted for an administration like the one Kherson got.
What you are saying are the regular issues of the transitory administrations. It is going to get fixed sooner rather than later.
https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1535895123212509184?t=k_DyNZxMC2i6J7GqSrEALQ&s=19
Camera footage from the Russia National Day in Kherson. I’ve seen more life at a family funeral. And a bigger crowd.
That’s in the town that bussed in hundreds of Russians for the victory parade in May. Look at that “crowd” today when the Russian media wasn’t around. No sense of victory, nobody’s rejoicing.
Some who arrived in May are staying but many have decamped to Crimea because it’s a basket case. Busloads of people are also heading north, into Ukrainian held territory.
Now that even ethnic Russians and imported Russian settlers don’t want to live under the occupation imposed on Kherson, the Kremlin installed administration is extremely vulnerable. If it becomes a line of into a street lamp pinatas,that won’t be due to Azov or the Uke arny - it’ll be furious ethnic Russians rebelling against the Kremlin’s appointees who have looted and ruined thrir city.