Kherson Oblast (Russia) territory claimed by Ukraine
The Russian occupation of Kherson Oblast is an ongoing military occupation of Ukraine's Kherson Oblast by Russian forces that began on 2 March 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine as part of the southern Ukraine campaign. It was administrated under a Russian-controlled military-civilian regime until 30 September 2022, when it was illegally annexed to become a widely unrecognized federal subject of Russia.
Russia captured the city of Kherson on 2 March 2022. Kherson was the first major Ukrainian city to fall during the invasion, and the only regional capital that Russia managed to capture in the 2022 invasion, though the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk had been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Most of the rest of Kherson Oblast fell to Russian forces in the early months of the invasion.Russia laid the groundwork for annexation in the following months by introducing the Russian ruble as official currency and forcibly removing the hryvnia from circulation. After holding widely disputed referendums in September 2022, Russia declared that it had annexed Kherson Oblast on 30 September, including parts of the oblast that it did not control at the time and small occupied areas of neigboring Mykolaiv Oblast. The United Nations condemned the annexations as violating international law.
In October 2022, as Ukraine's 2022 Kherson counteroffensive approached the city of Kherson itself, the Russian administration's executive bodies evacuated from Kherson to the left bank of the Dnieper River. They set up a new administrative centre in Henichesk, in the far south of the Kherson region. Throughout early November 2022, Russian forces fully withdrew from all the areas of Kherson and Mykolaiv regions on the right bank of the Dnieper, including the city of Kherson proper. Ukrainian forces entered the city of Kherson on 11 November. Russia continues to assert its claim to the entire oblast.