The main tasks of the Russian occupiers after the failure of the Crimean-Donetsk scenario of 2014 to seize the Kherson region were to stop civil resistance actions, control over local governments and liquidate independent media, writes in his article for ZN. UA "

“All three tasks began to be solved in the usual way for the Russian Federation by force.. Hundreds of people - city and village heads, deputies, public figures, journalists, media owners, veterans of the ATO / JFO - were abducted and thrown into basements. According to the prosecutor of the Kherson region Volodymyr Kalyuga, at the beginning of April, 137 cases of thefts and illegal detentions were documented in the region, the fate of almost 90 people is unknown,” she notes..

At the same time, none of the heads of local self-government bodies of Kherson publicly agreed to cooperate with the occupiers, and after their dismissal, most of them left the region and joined the volunteer movement.

“Meanwhile, people from Kherson and Zaporozhye are disappearing. Not only in the cellars of secret prisons. Fear of reprisals and unwillingness to live under the yoke of the Russian world drives people from the occupied territories to free. The Russians are holding back the flow of migrants, because they need the population as a human shield in every settlement, which tomorrow may be on the front line. However, the outflow of disloyal population also plays into their hands, and the crossing of numerous checkpoints makes it possible to carry out tough filtering,” the author writes..

Valentina Samar notes that in order to at least keep the land route from Russia, ORDLO to Crimea, Russia can sacrifice the previously taken Kherson on the right bank and blow up the Antonovskiy and Kakhovskiy bridges across the Dnieper.