Ukraine: Kherson, Russian "laboratory of horrors", for the United States
A Russian soldier in Kherson, southern Ukraine, May 20, 2022, with a replica Victory Banner marking the 77th anniversary of the end of World War II in the background.
PA
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
While Ukrainian forces continue to resist in Sievierodonetsk, in the Donbass, kyiv is also leading a counter-offensive on the Kherson oblast in the south of the country.
The Crimean border region was the first to fall into Moscow's hands, at the end of February.
Today, the Kremlin's objective would be to permanently integrate it into Russia.
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Kherson is now the "
Kremlin's laboratory of horrors
", according to the American ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (
OSCE
).
Michael Carpenter detailed, at the OSCE, the Russian campaign led to “absorb” Kherson and trample its system of democratic governance, its media and its civil society.
Today, nearly 600 people are believed to be held in basements across the region, subject to torture.
Despite the brutality with which the Russians seem to impose order, stories of resistance are growing.
On the website called National Resistance Center, the Ukrainian authorities claim sabotage every day: attacks on trains, assassinations of soldiers and leaflets calling for disobedience.
Claims impossible to verify independently, but the elements available today have convinced many conflict experts.
The American Institute for the Study of War has included in its maps a "guerrilla zone of partisans" near Kherson.
►Read again: Displaced people from Kherson flee "the occupation" and reach pro-kyiv cities
These supporters will not reverse the balance of power between Ukraine and Russia.
They allow however to break the Russian myth of a population acquired in Moscow.
They therefore prevent the organization of a potentially rigged referendum to record the integration of Kherson into Russia.
All of our daily, live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
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