The authorities appointed by the Kremlin in the Ukrainian province of Khersonlocated in the south of the country and occupied by russian troops from the early days of invasionhave urged the civilian population this Thursday to go to Russia to “protect” itself from “the daily missile attacks” that the region is suffering as a result of the ukrainian counteroffensive. your governor, Vladimir Balancestated in a video that the province recently annexed has decided to “give them the option to travel to other regions of the Russian Federation to rest and study,” before adding that they should take their children. Shortly after the announcement, the Russian deputy prime minister said the Kremlin would help organize the residents’ departure.
At first glance, everything looks white and bottled: the occupying authorities They don’t have it all with them and have decided to evacuate the civilian population in the face of the Ukrainian advance in the south of the country. An operation that has allowed kyiv recover more than 1,000 square kilometers in northeast Kherson, the furthest part from his capital, the only one of the provincial capitals completely controlled by his forces. “In recent days it is likely that the Russian occupying authorities have given orders to evacuate some civilians from Kherson,” said Thursday the british military intelligence in his daily assessment of the war. “They are likely to expect the fighting to spread to Kherson itself.”
But that is not how the announcement is being interpreted in Ukraine, given the precedents of crimea, also annexed by the Kremlin eight years ago. Since Russia seized it in 2014, at least 600,000 Russians They have moved to the peninsula, according to the Ukrainian government, a figure that academic studies put up to one million. At the same time, the Ukrainian population has decreased as a result of various strategies such as persecution of pro-Ukrainian activists wave forced conscription in the Russian army.
Forced population transfers
“It’s similar to what happened in crimea“, Oleksiy Melnyk, a military analyst at the Razumkov Center -based in Kiev- and former director of the Department of Analysis of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, assures this newspaper. “They are applying a genocidal bias policy consisting of alter demographics eventually replacing the Ukrainian population with the Russian population”.
The forced population transfers and demographic replacement were common currency during the soviet eraparticularly in times of Stalin. And also in this war they have been the order of the day. “Russia and its affiliated forces have been transferring Ukrainian civilians, including those fleeing the hostilitiesthe Russian Federation and the areas occupied by its forces in Ukraine,” he denounced in September Human Rights Watch. The organization added that these practices constitute a “war crime” and “potentially a crime against humanity”.
Russian citizenship
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The invitation launched this Thursday to the civilians of Kherson by the governor of the occupying forces, who, according to his number two, later clarified “it’s not an order”doesn’t technically force anyone to move to Russia, but it comes less than 10 days after Moscow gave all Ukrainians in the four annexed regions (Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, Lugansk) one month to accept or reject the Russian citizenship.
“Those who don’t will lose their rights. And I’m not talking about being able to vote in the Russian elections, but about being able sell their properties or access certain jobs. Basically they will become officially discriminated against, “explains Melnyk. Hence, the suggestion to go to Russia, is possibly more than an invitation.