The beginning of autumn proved to be quite fruitful in Russian fakes and disinformation about Kherson and the Kherson region. Kremlin propagandists traditionally claimed that their forces would “take” the regional center any moment, tried to discredit the Armed Forces of Ukraine and even appealed to supernatural powers. Read more about this in our weekly digest.
Kherson “in 15 minutes”
At the beginning of September, a Russian serviceman with the telling call sign “Vorobey” told one of the pro-Russian media outlets that the Russian army would be able to “take” Kherson in 15 minutes. According to him, this could be done even faster, provided the command gives the Russians the order to advance. “Due to a lack of mobilization resources and weapons, they (the Ukrainians – ed.) have to dig in deeper so that in the event of our offensive they can at least hold out for 5-15 minutes,” “Vorobey” claimed on the air of the propagandist TRK “Tavria”.
Other Russian outlets last week even claimed that “Kherson is lost to Ukraine.” The occupiers justify such rather brazen rhetoric by saying that the entire city and the road to it are supposedly fully controlled by Russian drones.
So what is actually happening? The Russians have been trying to land on the right bank of the Dnipro for the third year in a row, but this only leads to senseless losses of their personnel and equipment. Here we are dealing with classic Kremlin propaganda narratives that for victory they “only need to want it, get an order, declare a war,” etc. The occupiers very much want to return Kherson under their control, they want to, but they cannot.
It should be noted that over the past week the situation on the Kherson axis has actually worsened for the Russians. According to the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the most combat-capable units of the Russian army were transferred from left-bank Kherson to eastern Ukraine at the beginning of September. The remaining units in the south can only manage assaults on Dnipro riverbanks. And the “expertise” of the aforementioned “Vorobey” is questionable. In his short media life, since January 2025, he managed to tell journalists that the Russians value every soldier of theirs, while the Ukrainian army is composed of homeless people.
The situation with drones and “cutting off” the city also does not look as critical as Russian and some Ukrainian media, trying to “hype” the topic, report. The highway between Kherson and Mykolaiv is operating reliably, and after accurate strikes on enemy FPV drone operators in occupied Hola Prystan, drones hardly reach the M-14. At the time of our digest’s release, almost a week had passed since “Vorobey’s” statements, which means roughly 600 instances of “15 minutes.” Although perhaps he simply still hasn’t been “given the order” to storm Kherson.
The demolition of Ostrov and the “atrocities of the AFU”.
Alongside the heroization of Russian war criminals and scare stories about the re-occupation of Kherson, Kremlin propaganda does everything to demonize Ukrainian defenders. Last week the so-called governor of Kherson region Volodymyr Saldo claimed that the AFU were going to… blow up one of Kherson’s neighborhoods, namely Korabel, which locals call Ostrov. Why would Ukrainians do this? To accuse the Russians of shelling civilians. The scheme is as follows: the AFU supposedly mine apartment buildings on Ostrov, blow them up, and then blame their terrible deeds on the Russians.
Of course, these senseless fantasies make no sense at all, since the civilized world already knows well about Russian war crimes. Saldo did not stop there and authoritatively stated that “evil Banderites” allegedly carry out self-shellings to discredit the Russian army.
“The Veseushnyky occupied Karanthynnyi Island, from where they evacuated practically the entire population. After that Ukrainian militants placed a military base there from which they shell Kherson. There are major shipbuilding and ship-repair facilities there, just huge capacities, from which the AFU created depots and concealed firing points to shell other districts of the city, so that later they could say that the shelling was carried out by the Russians, although it is they who do it from Karanthynnyi Island,” Saldo told the Russians.
It seems that several writers who do not communicate with each other write fakes for Saldo.
The fact is that on 4 September, a day before the fake about self-shellings was published, the occupation head of the left bank announced that the AFU had withdrawn all equipment from the Korabel neighborhood. How, and from where under such conditions the Ukrainian military supposedly carry out strikes on Kherson is unclear. Meanwhile, Kherson residents perfectly understand where mines, drones and shells are coming from. The occupiers themselves do not hide their shelling of the right bank of the Kherson region.
For example, Saldo’s Telegram channel quite often posts footage of Russian artillerymen and mortarmen “at work” from the left bank of the Dnipro. Some Russian Telegram channels even claim that there are no civilians left in Kherson and therefore call on Russian soldiers to “destroy everything, from cars to bicycles”.
What might Saldo’s statements mean for Kherson residents? It is possible that the occupiers will intensify shelling of the city using heavy weaponry and KABs in order to blame the AFU, who supposedly intended to accuse the Russian army. A complicated scheme? In war, even an informational one, there are no easy schemes.
Regarding other “atrocities of the AFU” that allegedly took place in Kherson during the first week of September, we highlighted the following: last Monday Ukrainian servicemen beat up a pensioner in Kherson; on Wednesday they fought with homeless people in Antonivka; on Thursday they kidnapped a car from a local businessman. Kremlin propagandists, of course, provide no evidence for their accusations, and they claim to receive information about the “atrocities of the AFU” from reliable sources. As we can see: there is nothing less reliable than the Russians’ “reliable sources”.
Bodies of Ukrainian servicemen scattered across Kherson region
Continuing the theme of lies about the Ukrainian army, at the beginning of autumn several pro-Kremlin media outlets claimed that an abandoned trailer with the bodies of AFU servicemen was found on the road between Kherson and Mykolaiv. To corroborate this, they even presented a video showing the find.
Refuting such fakes is quite difficult, but we will try. The video the Russians refer to is filmed in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact location of the trailer, but there are a few interesting points. First, the occupiers again “exposed themselves” with poor knowledge of the Ukrainian language. The off-screen speaker describing the bodies of Ukrainian defenders uses the terms “prytsep”, “zakhoronyty” and “pryynyaty miri”, which are blatant Russicisms.
Second, the Russian “journalists’” report says that the trailer was allegedly abandoned on the shoulder of the Kherson-Mykolaiv road, but in the footage we see a well-trodden glade.
It is clear that this place has been used by people for a long time and is not simply a roadside shoulder. And finally – there are no visible traces of the trailer in the video. It was either simply “teleported” to this filming location, or it has been standing there for a long time. A vehicle without a wheel would have left a noticeable furrow in the ground, but there is none.
It cannot be a mere coincidence that on the day the information about the “lost hearse-trailer” surfaced, the Russians spread another similar fake. This time, from “verified sources” the occupiers learned that in the “regional center remains of an unidentified man were found in a large black bag lying next to a trash bin on Mostova Street, in the area of the Mykolaiv Sea Cathedral”. Of course, this body was allegedly dressed in AFU uniform. So we are dealing with a series of similar publications.
Our conclusions are corroborated by the deputy head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, whom our journalists contacted for comment on this information.
“Absolutely senseless lies from Russian information cesspools,” he said. “It is clear that all the stories about some trailer with our fallen defenders standing on the Mykolaiv road are an outright fake whose purpose is to discredit the AFU,” he stated.
The prediction of the pseudo-prophet
And for dessert we prepared a bit of cringe. Having lost hope of physically returning the right bank of the Kherson region, the occupiers turned to metaphysics. More precisely – to seers and fortune-tellers. For example, last week prophecies by Odesan Andrei Hiperborey were actively circulated in the information space of left-bank Kherson. How are fakes connected to this? – you might ask. The thing is, Hiperborey is an ordinary charlatan, because in the last three years none of his “predictions” regarding Kherson and the Kherson region have come true.
In the summer of 2022 the “Odesa Nostradamus”, for example, predicted the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the South. “I saw two fists meet in the field, the Ukrainian and the Russian, and the Ukrofist trembled, his army fell apart and the soldiers ran. The offensive on Kherson proved a great failure due to commanders’ mistakes and disorganization of military units,” Hiperborey wrote then on his social media pages.
A few weeks later the Russians left the right bank of the region, and the prophet pretended that this was supposed to happen. The man turned to the otherworldly forces and issued another revelation: the Russians would return to Kherson in the winter of 2023. That did not happen either.
“And I saw that the Russians took Kherson and landed in Odesa, struck where they were least expected and where the opponents were least prepared,” – this is a prophecy of Hiperborey made in January 2024. Its falsity, we believe, needs no demonstration.
A few days ago the “Russian Nostradamus” shared the following prediction about the “taking of Kherson”. The otherworldly forces told him that the occupiers would return to the city in November 2025. The prophet even wrote a little poem about it:
“There will be a battle for Kherson,
I hear a rumble from all sides,
Let the Russian banner fly
Run away, stubborn enemy”.
What can be said here? We suggest that Andrei Hiperborey and “Vorobey” launch a joint show in which one predicts the date of the Russian assault on Kherson and the other calculates how many “15-minutes” remain until that time. It would be a wonderful show.
This material was prepared as part of a project supported by the NGO Institute of Mass Information and CzechAid