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Kherson (Ukrainian and , , ) is a port city in southern Ukraine that serves as the administrative centre of Kherson Oblast. Located by the Black Sea and on the Dnieper, Kherson is the home to a major ship-building industry and is a regional economic centre. At the beginning of 2022, its population was estimated at 279,131.
From March to November 2022, the city was occupied by Russian forces during their invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces recaptured the city on 11 November 2022. In June 2023, the city was flooded following the Russian destruction of the nearby Kakhovka Dam.
The Russian Empire annexed the territory from the Crimean Khanate in 1774, and a decree of Catherine the Great on 18 June 1778 founded Kherson on the high bank of the Dnieper as a central fortress of the Black Sea Fleet.
1783 saw the city granted the rights of a district town and the opening of a local shipyard where the hulls of the Russian Black Sea fleet were laid. Within a year the Kherson Shipping Company began operations. By the end of the 18th century, the port had established trade with France, Italy, Spain and other European countries. Between 1783 and 1793 Poland's maritime trade via the Black Sea was conducted through Kherson by the Kompania Handlowa Polska. The Poles leased a piece of the shoreline and built houses, exchange offices, workshops and warehouses. There was substantial immigration of Polish people and a Polish consulate was established in 1783. In 1791, Potemkin was buried in the newly built St. Catherine's Cathedral. In 1803 the city became the capital of the Kherson Governorate."Херсон" Kherson. In Vvedensky, B. A., ed. (1957). Большая Советская Энциклопедия ''The. Vol. 46. 2nd ed. Moscow: State Scientific Publishing House. pp. 121–122.
Industry, beginning with breweries, tanneries and other food and agricultural processing, developed from the 1850s. According to the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other Slavic Countries from 1880, the city was mostly inhabited by Ukrainians, Greeks and Jews. According to the 1897 census, the population of the city was 59,076 of which, on the basis of their first language, 47.2% were recorded as Russian, 29.1% as Jewish, 19.6% Ukrainian, 1.7% Polish. During the revolution of 1905 there were workers' strikes and an army mutiny (an armed demonstration by soldiers of the 10th Disciplinary Battalion) in the city."Херсон" Kherson. In Zhukov, E. M., ed. (1974). Советская историческая энциклопедия ''Soviet. Vol. 15. Moscow: State Scientific Publishing House. pp. 504–506, 571–573.
The Bolsheviks dissolved SR-dominated Assembly after its first sitting,Figes, Orlando (1997). A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924, London: Pimlico. p. 516. and proceeded to force from Kiev the Tsentralna Rada whose response to the Leninism coup had been to proclaim the independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR). But, before the Bolsheviks could secure Kherson, they were obliged to cede the region under the terms of the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the German and Austrian controlled Ukrainian State. After the withdrawal of German and Austrian forces in November 1918, the efforts of the UPR (the Petliurites) to assert authority were frustrated by a French-led Allied intervention which occupied Kherson in January 1919.
In March 1919, the Green armies of local warlord Ataman Nykyfor Hryhoriv ousted the French and Greek garrison and precipitated the Allied evacuation from Odesa. In July, the Bolsheviks defeated Hryhoriv who had called upon the Ukrainian people to rise against the "Communist impostors" and their "Jewish commissars", and had perpetrated pogroms, including in the Kherson region. Kherson itself was occupied by the counter-revolutionary Whites before finally falling to the Bolshevik Red Army in February 1920. In 1922 the city and region was formally incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR a constituent republic of the Soviet Union.
The population was radically reduced from 75,000 to 41,000 by the famine of 1921–1923, but then rose steadily, reaching 97,200 in 1939.
Further devastation and population loss resulted from the German occupation during the Second World War. The German occupation, which lasted from August 1941 to March 1944, contended with both Soviet and Ukrainian nationalist (OUN) underground cells. The Kherson district leadership of the OUN was headed by (brother of OUN leader Stepan Bandera).Koval'chuk, Vladimir. Богдан – загадочный брат Степана Бандеры Bohdan. День Dyen'
In September 1941, the Germans executed the city's remaining Jewish population, several thousand men, women and children, in anti-tank ditches near the village of Zelenivka. Later, they used the place to bury Soviet soldiers from a prisoner-of-war camp in the city (Stalag 370).
In the post-war decades, which saw substantial industrial growth, the population more than doubled, reaching 261,000 by 1970. The new factories, including the Comintern Shipbuilding and Repairs Complex, the Kuibyshev Ship Repair Complex, and the Kherson Cotton Textile Manufacturing Complex (one of the largest textile plants in the Soviet Union), and Kherson's growing grain-exporting port, drew in labour from the Ukrainian countryside. This changed the city's ethnic composition, increasing the Ukrainian share from 36% in 1926 to 63% in 1959, while reducing the Russian share from 36 to 29%. The Jewish population never recovered from the The Holocaust visited by the Germans: accounting for 26% of residents in 1926, their number had fallen to just 6% in 1959.
The 2014 pro-Russian unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine was marked in Kherson by a small demonstration of some 400 persons. Following the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, Kherson housed the office of the Ukrainian President's representative in Crimea. Official website . Presidential representative of Ukraine in Crimea.
In July 2020, as part of the general administrative reform of Ukraine, the Kherson Municipality was merged as Kherson urban hromada into newly established Kherson Raion, one of five raions in the Kherson Oblast of which the city remained the administrative centre.
A "City Profile", part of the SCORE (Social Cohesion and Reconciliation) Ukraine 2021 project funded by USAID, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the European Union, concluded that "more than 80% of citizens in Kherson city feel their locality is a good place to live, work, and raise a family". This was despite a low level of trust in the local authorities in whom corruption was perceived to be high. It also found that, while more inclined to express support for co-operation with Russia than for membership of the EU, "citizens in Kherson feel attached to their Ukrainian identity".
The Volodymyr Saldo Bloc dissolved; its deputies in Kyiv joined the newly formed faction "Support to the programs of the President of Ukraine". From 26 April 2022, Volodymyr Saldo himself, who had been mayor of Kherson from 2002 to 2012, went on to serve the Russian occupiers, as head of the Kherson military–civilian administration.
Under the Russian occupation, locals continued to stage street protests against the invading army's presence and in support of the unity of Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian government, the Russian military sought to create a puppet Kherson People's Republic in the style of the Russian-backed separatist polities in the Donbas region and tried to coerce local councillors into endorsing the move, detaining those activists and officials who opposed their design.
By 26 April 2022, Russian troops had taken over the city's administration headquarters and had appointed both a new mayor, former KGB agent Alexander Kobets, and ex-mayor Volodymyr Saldo as a new civilian-military regional administrator. The next day, Ukraine's Prosecutor General said that troops used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse a further pro-Ukraine rally in the city centre. In an indication of an intended split from Ukraine, on the 28th the new administration announced that from May it would switch the region's payments to the Russian ruble. Citing unnamed reports about alleged discrimination against Russian speakers, its deputy head, Kirill Stremousov, said that "reintegrating the Kherson region back into a Nazi Ukraine is out of the question".
On 30 September 2022, the Russian Federation claimed to have annexed Kherson Oblast. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the proclaimed annexations with a vote of 143–5.
Russian forces were ordered to withdraw from the city by defence minister Sergei Shoigu and regroup on the eastern side of the Dnieper on 9 November 2022. Ukrainian officials claimed that Russian troops were destroying bridges connecting the city to the other bank of the river. On 11 November, Ukraine announced that its forces had entered the city following the Russian withdrawal. "Ukrainian forces enter Kherson after Russian retreat". . Times of Israel. Accessed 26 February 2024.
Before retreating, the Russian army destroyed infrastructure facilities of the city (communications, water, heat, electricity, TV tower), looted two main museums (Local History Museum and the Art Museum), transporting their items to Crimean museums, and took away several monuments to historical figures.
In June 2023, the city was flooded following the Russian destruction of the nearby Kakhovka Dam.
On 23 October 2023, online voting concluded on the renaming of numerous streets and localities in Kherson for purposes of decolonization and derussification. This was in accordance with Law of Ukraine "On Condemnation and Prohibition of Propaganda of Russian Imperial Policy in Ukraine and Decolonization of Toponymy", giving local councils six months to remove problematic toponymy.
With Russian forces entrenched just across the Dnipro River, the city remains subject to frequent shelling, and since May 2024, to small drone attacks that target civilians in a Terrorism campaign that has become known as the ″human safari″. Drones, according to American freelance journalist Zarina Zabrisky many of them funded by Russian civilians, hit targets such as people at bus stops, commuters and children playing in parks, with footage of the attacks being shared and celebrated on Russian social media. According to the Kherson City Council Executive Committee, between 1 May and 16 December 2024, drone attacks in Kherson killed at least 30 civilians and injured another 483. In March 2025, the regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, was reporting between 600 and 700 drone attacks a week in the city.
In these conditions, the city's pre-war population of 280,000 has shrunk to just 60,000.
Kherson is connected to the national railroad network of Ukraine. There are daily long-distance services to Kyiv, Lviv and other cities.
Kherson is served by Kherson International Airport. It operates a 2,500 x 42-meter concrete runway, accommodating Boeing 737, Airbus 319/320 aircraft, and helicopters of all series.
Soviet era (1917–1991)
Early Bolshevik period
In the Russian Constituent Assembly election held in November 1917—the first and last free election in Kherson for 70 years—Bolsheviks who had seized power in Saint Petersburg and Moscow received just 13.2 percent of the vote in the Governorate. The largest electoral bloc in the district, with 43 percent of the vote, was an alliance of Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), Russian Socialist Revolutionaries and the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party.
World War II and post-War period
In 1940, the city was one of the sites of executions of Polish people officers and intelligentsia committed by the Soviets as part of the Katyn massacre. (2025). 9788380988255, IPN. ISBN 9788380988255
In independent Ukraine
With a turnout of 83.4% of eligible voters, 90.1% of the votes cast in Kherson Oblast affirmed Ukrainian independence in the national referendum of 1 December 1991. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kherson and its industries experienced severe dislocation. Over the following three decades, the population of both the city and the region declined, reflecting both a significant excess of deaths over live births and persistent net-emigration from the area.
2020 local election
In the last free elections before the 2022 Russian invasion, the Ukrainian local elections held on 25 October 2020, the results of Kherson City Council elections were as follows:
The parties widely perceived as pro-Russian, and Euroscepticism,
+Kherson City Council election, 2020
!Party
!Percentage of vote
!Seats We Have to Live Here! 23.1% 17 seats Opposition Platform – For Life 14.5% 11 seats Servant of the People 13.0% 10 seats Volodymyr Saldo Bloc 11.8% 9 seats European Solidarity 8.6%
Opposition Platform, Volodymyr Saldo Bloc, and Party of Shariy (3.9%) had a combined vote of just over 30% of the total, and secured 20 out of the 54 seats on the city council. In the wake of the invasion, the Opposition Platform and the Party of Shariy were banned by the National Security Council for alleged ties to the Kremlin. "Court bans Sharia Party". . Ukrainska Pravda (16 June 2022)
Russian invasion from February 2022
Kherson witnessed heavy fighting in the first days of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (Kherson offensive). As of 2 March the city was under Russian control, and as early as 8 March the Russian FSB was reported to be tasked with crushing resistance.
Demographics
Ethnicity
According to the Ukrainian National Census in 2001, Kherson had a majority population of Ukrainians (76.5%), with a large minority of Russians (19.9%) and 3.6% others. The exact ethnic composition was as follows:
Languages
53.4% 45.3%
Administrative divisions
There are three urban districts:
Geography
Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification, Kherson has a humid continental climate ( Dfa).
Transport
Kherson has a seaport on the Dnieper river – the Port of Kherson – and a port on the Koshevaya or river – the Kherson River Port.
Economy
Education
There are 77 high schools as well as 5 colleges. There are 15 institutions of higher education, including:
The documentary Dixie Land was filmed at a music school in Kherson.
Main sights
Notable people
Sport
Twin cities
Notes
External links
Categories: Cities In Kherson Oblast, Port Cities And Towns In Ukraine, Port Cities And Towns Of The Black Sea, Cities Of Regional Significance In Ukraine, Populated Places On The Dnieper In Ukraine, Oblast Centers In Ukraine, Populated Places Established In 1778, 1778 Establishments In The Russian Empire, Populated Places Established In The Russian Empire, Khersonsky Uyezd, Holocaust Locations In Ukraine, Kherson Urban Hromada, Sites Of World War Ii Massacres Of Poles
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