This is how the partisans increase their violence in Kherson in the face of the proximity of the Ukrainian army

Dimitri Savluchenko got into his car last Friday in the port city of Kherson and never returned home. The partisans who have been fighting the new pro-Russian administration for some time took another step in his dynamic of violence and blew him up. Savluchenko, head of the youth, family and sports department of the pro-Russian civil-military administration in Kherson, thus became the first officer killed by Ukrainian resistance on conquered territory.

Savluchenko’s assassination comes at a time of intense activity on the part of the partisans. The Ukrainian troops are approaching little by little -the most optimistic calculations place them ten kilometers from the capital- and although the Russian resistance promises to be fierce, it is important sow the seed of doubt and fear. Anyone who collaborates or has collaborated with the administration imposed from Moscow will be subject to reprisals as soon as the city is liberated.

It must be remembered that Kherson was one of the first large Ukrainian cities to fall after the invasion of February 24, something that continues to cause headaches for Volodimir Zelensky and that it was behind the decision last month to dispense with the Chief of the Armed Forces. Territory Defense. Apparently, the Ukrainian president continues to think that there was some complicity between the authorities in the area and the Russian army from Crimea. The slowness with which they reacted made it possible for the ports of Melitopol and Kherson to immediately fall into the hands of the invader and now it costs a world to recover the lost ground.

[Al menos 11 muertos en el ataque a un centro comercial con más de 1.000 personas en Kremenchuk]

Posters and rewards

The recovery of both cities depends largely on the ability from within to sabotage the Russian defense attempt. In the end, the bulk of Putin’s troops is in Donbasand what remains in the south are rearguard units, lacking the weaponry and dexterity of the elite battalions that seem willing to pounce on Lisichansk at any time after having finally conquered Sievierodonetsk.

These acts of sabotage have been active for a long time: at the end of April, coinciding with the threats of the pro-Russian authorities to carry out a referendum to determine the annexation of Kherson to the Russian Federation, several weapons depots were already burned and the demonstrations in the street, suppressed with pepper spray and shots in the air by the occupying forces. That display of violence caused the partisan movement to back down for a time. Now, the close presence of the local army has once again emboldened him.

Posters calling for the head of Kiril Stremusov, head of the pro-Russian administration in the city for 500,000 hryvnias (about $17,000), have been followed by more original proposals, such as paying directly in bitcoins. Let us remember that the corralito imposed from kyiv (the maximum per transfer reached two hundred dollars, although it has risen since then), plus the problems with the quotation of the gryvka, made both the government and the citizens resort to the cryptocurrencies as a payment method. Its collapse in May has been another heavy blow to the Ukrainian domestic economy.

Climbing to car bombs

Anyway, these are anecdotes compared to the wave of bomb attacks that has been experienced throughout the month of June: On the 18th, a bomb exploded next to a tree in the path of the car of Eugeni Sobolev, head of a penal colony. The driver emerged from the skirmish unharmed, as did Yuri Turuliov, mayor of the nearby town of Chornobayivka, in a similar action four days later. It is not so clear what exactly happened to Alexei Kovalyov, a Ukrainian deputy accused of collaboration with the Russians, whose car was found smashed after another explosion that same June 22. The partisans assure that he died in the attack. The Russians deny it.

[Putin vuelve a bombardear Kiev mientras el G7 renueva sus sanciones contra Rusia]

Threatening posters and bombs are the most common forms of resistance in Kherson, but even more shocking was the news of the death of two Russian soldiers in a restaurant at the hands of a group of guerrillas on June 20. A third, according to Ukrainian propaganda, was wounded. The occupation forces’ obsession with detecting and isolating possible members of these partisan guerrillas may be behind the effort to distribute Russian passports among the population, assuming that those who accept them are among the collaborators while those who remain faithful to the nationality Ukrainian would immediately be counted as suspects.

Obviously, all this can take a 180 degree turn if the troops sent from kyiv manage to enter and liberate the city. Those with a Russian passport are exposed to bloody reprisals. For now, the Institute for the Study of War, generally conservative in its estimates, states that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has reached Posad-Poktovske, twenty-five kilometers from Kherson airport and has occupied Oleksandrivka, forty kilometers west of the capital. It is not the ten kilometers that certain accounts or the partisan militias themselves speak of, but everyone agrees that the advance is continuous and serious. Whether he will be able to overcome the two retaining walls that Russia is preparing is another question that will be determined shortly.