South of Kherson region. What is going on there?

Repressions against the Crimean Tatars, replacement of the Ukrainian population, and confiscation of property. New harsh realities in the Kherson region.

After the occupation of Crimea, the Henichesk district of Kherson Oblast was the only place of compact residence for Crimean Tatars in the free territories of Ukraine.

According to the estimates of the Henichesk District State Administration, by the end of 2021, about 8,000 Crimeans lived in the region, almost half of them in the village of Novooleksiivka. The Crimean Tatar language was taught in the local school. It was planned that the region would be a pilot in the revival of the teaching of the modern version of Crimean Tatar in the Latin alphabet, which Ukraine would later transfer to the liberated Crimea.

After the start of the full-scale invasion, the Crimean Tatars organized several pro-Ukrainian rallies and demonstrations in the Henichesk district in the first month of the occupation. Therefore, the occupiers launched the first repressions against the Crimeans and their representative body - the Mejlis.

Of the 25 first prisoners in PTU-17 (Ukrainian: professional technical school), where the occupiers set up a prison-torture chamber, 15 were Crimean Tatars.

The revenge of the occupiers turned out to be cruel because in March 2022, 1,500,000 Crimeans and Ukrainians turned out against the Russian army in the small town of Novooleksiivka, and almost 10,000 Ukrainian citizens gathered in Henichesk for a pro-Ukrainian rally.

Then there were mass pro-Ukrainian actions in Kherson, which the occupiers dispersed with grenades. The suppression of the Kherson protests was the start of repressions, kidnappings, and murders of Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories.

As of 2023, 60% of Crimean Tatars have left the Henichesk district. Of the 8,000, a little over 3,000 remain there. The Crimeans of the Kherson region are scattered around the areas of Zaporizhzhia that Ukraine controls to the Czech Republic, Germany, and Ireland. About 200 stay in the Ukrainian capital and Kyiv region.

In the Henichesk district, most residents who remain there, are 80-90 years old people, plus their children who take care of them, who are also mostly of retirement age.

The Russian occupiers confiscated dozens of houses of Crimean Tatars in Novooleksiivka and placed officers of the occupying army in them.

The occupiers set up headquarters in the house of the deputy head of the Henichesk District State Administration, Gulnara Bekirova, and her husband, political prisoner Edem Bekirov.

The house of the chairman of the Mejlis of the Henichesk district and the local school director, Lenur Lyumanov, was confiscated; the occupants are living in it now. In the local mosque, the Russians replaced the imam with one loyal to the occupation authorities.

On the occupied territory of the Kherson Region, Russia is carrying out the genocide of the Ukrainian population, replacing it with immigrants not only from the poor regions of the Russian Federation but also from the countries of Central Asia. For those who have not yet been forced to leave by repression, Russia kills physically, as happened after the Kakhovskaya HPP was blown up.

Even before the Great War, Kherson Oblast was the least populated region of Ukraine - about a million people. And now it is becoming the region that has lost the most residents.