Key points from interview with Oleksandr Prokudin, the Head of Kherson Military Administration, for RBC Ukraine.
• Currently, in Kherson region, 228 settlements have been liberated on the right bank of the Dnieper River. As of July, approximately 168,000 people live in these liberated areas. This is one-third of the population that lived in the region before the full-scale invasion, not counting the left bank. Overall, the region had around one million people, and now there are 168,000 on the right bank. Among them, more than 70,000 are elderly, 14,000 are children, and about 31,000 residents are internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have moved from the left bank or from further away to safer communities.
We have evacuated over 47,000 people from settlements along the Dnieper, including nearly 6,500 children and 470 individuals with limited mobility. We are now creating hubs in other cities—Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, and Mykolaiv—where people can receive humanitarian aid, food and hygiene kits, legal and psychological support. They can also learn about job vacancies, as employment center staff work in these hubs to help our fellow citizens find work. We also plan to open similar hubs in Lviv and Kropyvnytskyi.
• If we consider everything happening in the region, we can say that we experience an explosion every two minutes. In other words, breaking it down by intensity, residents of Kherson region generally hear explosions every two minutes.
Since the beginning of the year, Russian forces have shelled Kherson region more than 28,000 times. They have fired about 158,000 shells from various types of weapons. The situation in Kherson is particularly difficult now because they have started actively using drones, simply dropping explosives from FPV drones and destroying everything they can in Kherson.
• In July alone, 270 shells hit. That month, 28 people were killed and 199 were injured, including 6 children. They are constantly using drones now and targeting everything they can reach – ambulances, police, and rescuers. Many vehicles have burned, and they target people while they are simply walking down the street.
Since the beginning of the year, 1,030 people have been affected: 135 killed and 868 injured, including 27 children. We see that 227 people in the last month is a very large percentage of the total, meaning that shelling has intensified. We observe an increase in activity.
• For a long time now, in those settlements where it is possible to restore electricity, we have done so. This includes 188 out of 228 locations. There are 40 settlements along the Dnipro where it is impossible to restore power; everything has been burned, and even vehicles cannot reach these areas due to shelling. Even without decisions from the Cabinet, we have regular power outages, and we have become accustomed to constant shelling of the energy infrastructure. There are periods without electricity, we replace and repair, and teams work every day, usually around one to one and a half hundred units. We are continuously restoring the power networks, a sort of natural selection process.
Regarding the heating season, the current level of readiness is 53%. Only in Kherson do we have centralized heating, and we are continuing to prepare the boiler houses and heating networks. At the same time, we are installing cogeneration units in the boiler houses. Currently, we have 8 such units, and the process of connecting them is ongoing. We will manage; we are capable of ensuring this even if there is no electricity. These units provide power for the internal needs of the boiler houses. We will be provided with both electricity and heat, even in an emergency situation.
For the heating season, we are working with international partners. We have 77,000 people who need heating materials. Last year, we managed to cover all categories of the population in Kherson region. This year, we started this process at the beginning of summer, and 30% of people are already provided for. I believe we will get through this heating season.
• Almost 70% of the territory of Kherson region is occupied, which includes 468 settlements. Every community is in contact with the residents. The situation there is extremely difficult. Currently, Russia is engaged in raider-like seizure of property, which they call "nationalization of abandoned property." In reality, they are stealing the homes of people who have left the occupied areas.
• In the first half of the year, 317 cases have been opened regarding violations of national security principles, including 216 specifically for collaboration activities. During this period, 231 individuals have been notified of suspicion. Work against enemy collaborators is ongoing, involving government officials, various council deputies, law enforcement officers, and ordinary citizens. Honestly, thanks to the SBU, the prosecutor's office, and the police, the pace is high. They are catching everyone who helped the Russian forces torture or kill our people; all of them will face the law and the court. Each one will be brought to justice.
• What are the consequences of the dam explosion? We will feel the consequences for a long time. Irrigation is nonexistent, and the area is drying out where water from the reservoir doesn't reach. As for the lower part of the Dniepr River, downstream of the Kakhovka Dam, everything has returned to its previous level in terms of water quality and other indicators. Meanwhile, upstream of the Kakhovka Dam, the reeds have grown more than four meters. There is indeed a huge forest there; everything is growing, and ecologists are saying it’s great. However, for the region’s economy, it's not very beneficial, as the amount of irrigation that existed has dropped to zero. The Left Bank is especially suffering now. Nature reserves were flooded, and we lost a lot; we will feel this loss for a long time. But life and nature continue to evolve. How it will progress remains to be seen. Scientists and environmentalists are divided on this. Some say that the Kakhovka Dam should not be rebuilt, while economically informed people argue that it must be rebuilt because the region cannot survive otherwise.
• There was information that the Russian forces were hunting animals and destroying the nature reserve. That’s true; they are destroying it. The latest I heard is that they are transporting animals to Crimea and Russia. So, you could say that the nature reserve no longer exists. They have looted it thoroughly.
