Russian propaganda is trying to revive a fake well known to Ukrainians since 2014. Denying their crimes against the civilian population, the occupiers blame the shelling of Kherson and the right bank of Kherson region… the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “Evil Banderites” allegedly carry out self-shelling to thus discredit the “heroic” Russian army. A corresponding absurd statement was made by the so-called “governor” of Kherson region, collaborator Volodymyr Saldo.
Saldo told this to Russian journalists the day before.
“Veseushnyky occupied Quarantine Island, from which they evacuated practically the entire population. Afterwards Ukrainian militants placed a military base there from which they shell Kherson. There are the main shipbuilding and ship-repair facilities, simply huge capacities, from which the AFU guys created depots and hidden positions to shell other districts of the city, so that later they can say that the shelling is carried out by the Russians, although it is they themselves who do it from Quarantine Island”, – the traitor told the Russians.
It seems that several writers who do not communicate with each other at all write fakes for Saldo at once. The thing is, on September 4, that is, a day before the publication of the fake about self-shelling, the Gauleiter of the left bank stated that the AFU withdrew all equipment from the Korabel neighborhood. Why? Because they plan to blow it up. How, and above all with what under such conditions the Ukrainian military supposedly carry out strikes on Kherson – is unclear.
For their part, Kherson residents understand perfectly well where the mines, drones and shells flying at them come from. The occupiers themselves do not hide their shelling of the right bank of Kherson region either. For example, on Saldo’s Telegram channel footage of Russian artillerymen and mortar crews “at work” from the left bank of the Dnipro appear quite often.
Some Russian Telegram channels even claim that there are no civilians left in Kherson, therefore they call on Russian military to “knock down everything, from cars to bicycles”.
It should also be noted that the fake about self-shelling of Kherson is not the first time the Russians have produced. Thus, as was reported earlier, at the end of 2022 the Telegram channel “Kherson.ru” posted a video in which some woman tells that Kherson is allegedly being shelled by Ukrainian military, and then the Russians are blamed for it.
Moreover, it was not just Ukrainian troops who “shell Kherson”, but the “nationalist battalions ‘Azov’ and ‘Tornado’.” Except that the Tornado battalion did not exist at that time at all. It was disbanded on June 18, 2015.
This material was prepared within a project supported by the NGO Institute of Mass Information and CzechAid