Kherson: How is Russia enforcing its power over the occupied Ukrainian territory?

Before the invasion, it had a population of 290,000.

But, according to its former mayor, some 40% of residents have since fled the city.

If Russia aims to take southern Ukraine and establish a land bridge to Crimea, Kherson, at the mouth of the Dnieper River, on the Black Sea coast, will be key, the UK Ministry of Defence says.

Areas of Russian military control in Ukraine

The new regional government is also phasing out Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, and introducing the Russian rouble.

The four-month transition started on 1 May, with the authorities banning deliveries of Ukrainian money to banks.

Kherson residents have told BBC News the military authorities have started paying people’s pensions in roubles.

But many are trying to find small ways to defy the Russian forces, including exchanging any roubles they receive back into hryvnia.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned residents Russia aims to hold a “so-called referendum” in the Kherson region, on breaking from Ukraine and becoming a “people’s republic”.

He has advised people not to give the Russian authorities any personal data, such as passport numbers, as they might be used to falsify votes.

The UK Ministry of Defence said, in an intelligence update in April, a referendum would be a way for Russia to justify its occupation of Ukraine.

But Mr Kolykhaiev said it would be illegal since Kherson officially remains part of Ukraine.

And President Zelensky has said it fits in with Russia’s plans of breaking Ukraine apart by creating “pseudo-republics” throughout the country.

In an apparent confirmation of the scenario on Wednesday, Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of Kherson’s Moscow-installed administration, said: “There will be a request to make Kherson region a full subject of the Russian Federation.”

Soon afterwards, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said residents should decide their own future – and mentioned Crimea as an example.

Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014, after a referendum declared invalid by the United Nations General Assembly.

It built a bridge between Crimea and southern Russia and moved in weapons, introduced the rouble and phased out the hryvnia.

And pro-Russian media is now dominant in the peninsula.

But the situation in Kherson is even closer to that in two regions of eastern Ukraine seized by Russian proxy forces shortly after Crimea was annexed.

The puppet leaders in the east created so-called people’s republics, in Luhansk and Donetsk, where they also use the rouble and have given the population Russian passports.

Russia pays pensions and government salaries there.

In the schools, children are taught to a Russian curriculum.

And Ukraine complained to Moscow of the “Russification” of eastern Ukraine.