We stopped here in Kherson with a number of tasks, including we wanted to see the director of the youth policy department Dmitry Savluchenko.
A brave guy, he openly spoke for Russia even before February 24.
When the Russians came, he took up work in his native city.
We visited the fighters of the Donetsk battalion "Oplot", standing on the Kherson front;
rejoiced at the abundance of posters "Kherson - a city with Russian history", which depict Catherine the Great, Potemkin-Tauride, Pushkin, Denis Davydov, Sergei Bondarchuk;
spent the night in a hospitable Kherson hotel and the next day found out: Dmitry was killed.
He died in a terrorist attack - he was blown up in a car.
Diversion, and not the first in Kherson.
The Ukrainian network immediately began to rejoice and dance: what happiness, they killed, they killed!
In my memory, this is the third Kherson political activist killed by saboteurs.
In fact, far more terrorist attacks have been prevented: the number goes to dozens.
The Russian special services working there do not spread too much about it, so as not to introduce the local population and governing bodies into neurosis.
But everyone already understands: the vastness of the borders, alas, still allows visiting pros to appear in the region.
Note that the local sabotage network (not without the help of the local department of the SBU, which agreed to contact with Russia) was generally eliminated this spring.
Moreover, a serious part of the potential partisans surrendered of their own free will.
Those who surrendered showed caches with weapons: an unrealistic, note, the number of barrels - the number goes into the thousands.
It was really possible to partisan there, but the Kherson people decided that in figs they didn’t need such entertainment.
This was the reason for the most severe irritation of political Kyiv and its curators.
So in the Kherson region, a bet was made on terror.
Kyiv and its curators had to intimidate the locals so that it would never occur to people to stand in line for Russian passports and contact the “occupiers”.
Let's repeat, they ordered to kill not even military or police officers, but administrative and public figures: some may be responsible for the youth, others for housing and communal services - the saboteurs do not care.
And here is what I remember about it.
Since 2015, for three years, I worked as an adviser to the head of the DPR Alexander Zakharchenko.
Let me tell you straight away: we had a network on the other side of the former Donetsk Republic, which, among other things, allowed the leadership of the DPR to liquidate administrative managers subordinate to Kyiv.
Among them were outright enemies, including those who served in the ATO zone, but there were ordinary managers.
Never, not once did it occur to Zakharchenko to order the destruction of any of them.
Why?
Because we are not terrorists.
Our liberals will tell me: Kyiv has other reasons - for them you were all terrorists, and he had the right to liquidate you, because he is in power, and you are separatists, and Russia would do the same.
Wait, hey!
Remember, in Russia there was a war in the North Caucasus?
It lasted eight years.
Russia either attacked or retreated, unable to cope with the partisan army pumped from abroad with weapons and money.
But Moscow, be that as it may, retained many opportunities.
Yes, Moscow really had a hand in the elimination of its main military opponents - Basayev and Khattab.
But in order to purposefully kill, blow up, shoot the heads of settlements or cities in Chechnya, who were subordinate to Dudayev or Khattab?
Can you imagine such a thing at all?
So that in Moscow they take and give an order: let's blow up the mayor of Shali, the head of the transport department in Grozny and the head of youth policy in Gudermes?
No.
This could not be.
Why?
Because we are not terrorists.
Because we knew: we still have to live with this people, this is our people.
Because war is war, and terror is terror, and no self-respecting government will do that.
They're coming to Kyiv.
The reason is simple: they do not trust their citizens.
They know perfectly well that if people are given free rein, three-quarters of them will immediately receive Russian passports.
So it's not their people...
We were leaving the hotel - and the air defense system worked over the city.
Kyiv and shoots at the city for exactly the same.
The political elite of Ukraine secretly hate Ukrainians.
The inhabitants of Kherson did not turn out to be partisans - they live a peaceful life and think less and less about Zelensky.
Why does Kyiv need these people alive?
We only need these people.
These are our people.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.