A Vote Without Rules and Numbers Pulled Out of Thin Air: How Russians Conducted Their “Referendum” in Occupied Kherson Oblast
Soda water tables, a handful of people waving tiny Russian flags, and folk songs sung to a bayan at a polling station — this is how the so-called “referendum” on Kherson Oblast’s annexation to Russia appears in propaganda segments on Rutube, the video platform that replaced the banned YouTube in Russia.
What’s left out of the frame: the absence of voter lists, results announced before any votes were counted, and armed Russian soldiers escorting the process.
Especially for Signal to Resist, Olena Vysokolian analyzed these propaganda materials and spoke with local residents about how, in September 2022, the occupiers tried to legitimize Kherson Oblast’s “accession to Russia.” Even the smallest details made it clear that the entire procedure was a sham.
Rushed, But Following the Same Old Script
Rumors that the Russian authorities would try to stage a “referendum” in occupied southern Ukraine began circulating as early as March 2022 — in the very first weeks of the occupation. At the time, many in Ukraine suspected that Russia would attempt to use the same playbook it had followed in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea in 2014.
"They’re going to try to ‘sell’ this picture to the international community — like, ‘We didn’t take this land by force, the locals decided they wanted to form a republic and then join us,’" said Dmytro Lubinets, a member of parliament (now Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner), during a broadcast on the FreeDom TV channel in May 2022.
But even staging an illegitimate vote turned out to be harder than expected. The occupiers repeatedly postponed the potential date of the “referendum.” The final dates — September 23–27 — were only announced a few days before the event itself.
Dementii Bilyi, a political analyst from Kherson who was in the city at the time, believes that Russia decided to simulate a voting process only because of the mass resistance from locals. Otherwise, he says, they would have simply declared the territory part of Russia without bothering with formalities.
"The peaceful resistance of people who took to the streets in protest completely disrupted the occupiers’ initial plan," Bilyi explains. "Local self-government bodies refused to cooperate with the Russians. Even pro-Russian parties like OPZZh came out with pro-Ukrainian positions."
Bilyi recalls that for a long time, the Russians had no clear idea what to do in Kherson Oblast. For nearly two months, they didn’t even remove Ukrainian flags from government buildings.
Viacheslav Husakov, a journalist with Most, a local Kherson media outlet, believes the decision to proceed with the “vote” was made suddenly and in haste. The reason, he argues, was Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in the south, which began in summer 2022. In early September, Ukrainian forces liberated Vysokopillia, a key strategic point. To offset their losses on the battlefield, the Russians rushed to create a "victory image" for state television using the territories they still controlled.
Just a few days before the “vote” began, the occupation authorities suddenly announced the annexation of several villages in Mykolaiv Oblast that had been seized by Russian forces, claiming they were now part of Kherson Oblast — and would therefore be included in the so-called “referendum.”
Russian state media reported that the process in these areas was proceeding “as planned.” But on September 25, the Kherson occupation election commission announced that voting in the town of Snihurivka, Mykolaiv Oblast, had been suspended due to shelling.
At the same time, residents of Snihurivka who had managed to escape the occupation recorded a video message declaring that they did not support joining the Russian Federation.
Who Helped Organize It
The illegal central election commission in Kherson Oblast was headed by Maryna Zakharova, a native of Donetsk. Back in the summer of 2022, members of the so-called “election commission” appointed her as the head of the so-called Department of Internal and External Policy of the Military-Civil Administration of Kherson Oblast.
Since 2014, Zakharova had worked in the “Ministry of Labor and Social Policy of the DPR” and in the “administration of the head of the DPR.” The Russian propaganda outlet Moskovsky Komsomolets described her as someone who “emerged from the ‘Russian Spring’ in Donbas.”
However, according to Volodymyr Molchanov, a political scientist from Kherson, a key role in organizing the pseudo-referendum was played by two local legal experts who had previously worked under Kherson Mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev before the full-scale invasion and occupation.
He refers to Vitalia Onishchenko and Inna Poliarenko, both of whom had previously been involved in Kherson’s electoral processes. Poliarenko, in particular, headed the Kherson City Territorial Election Commission from 2010 to 2014 and was the one who officially declared Volodymyr Saldo — now a known collaborator — as Kherson’s mayor three times. According to the civic network OPORA, during the May 2014 snap mayoral elections, the Kherson election commission engaged in corrupt practices related to the printing of ballots.
On June 20, 2022, Ukraine’s National Police opened a criminal case regarding the seizure of electoral documents by occupation authorities from the State Archive of Kherson Oblast.
The report described three unidentified men carrying IDs issued by the Russian-created Military-Civil Administration of Kherson Oblast. Armed with weapons, they threatened archive employees and confiscated 15 boxes of electoral materials, including voter rolls from Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election. This was confirmed by a State Archive employee who spoke to investigators.
However, according to Volodymyr Molchanov, the Russians were not acting alone — they were assisted by Inna Poliarenko, who had in-depth knowledge of exactly which documents would be useful for organizing the “vote.”
"They found exactly what they were looking for and took the documents to an office located at 2 Hotelnyi Lane," Molchanov says.
According to YouControl, a Ukrainian business registry, this address is linked to a company called "Kapital Yuryst Plyus" (Capital Lawyer Plus LLC). One of the listed beneficiaries of the company is Vitalia Onishchenko, previously mentioned.
Kherson partisans, aware of the exact location, had planned to destroy the documents in order to sabotage the occupiers’ efforts to stage a “referendum.” However, Molchanov says the plan was ultimately scrapped due to the risk of civilian casualties. Later, he adds, it became clear that the voter rolls didn’t matter anyway.
No Voter Rolls, but Plenty of Guns
Despite having access to personal data of Kherson residents, the occupiers never intended to organize voting in line even with Russian laws, say civilians who witnessed the events of the so-called “referendum” in occupied Kherson Oblast. The procedural violations can be seen even in the pro-Russian propaganda footage aired on state-run TV channels.
Russian troops and local collaborators set up polling stations primarily in schools — there were 12 of them in Kherson. In addition, so-called mobile polling stations were placed at local markets, and occupiers also went door-to-door with ballot boxes.
Every polling station — both fixed and mobile — was accompanied by armed men in balaclavas carrying assault rifles.
People could vote at any polling station, and it was enough to show any form of ID — a passport wasn’t required.
Dementii Bilyi, who has monitored elections in Ukraine since 1999, recalls that after announcing the date of the fake vote, Volodymyr Saldo signed the “regulations” for conducting the “referendum.” However, this document was never made public.
"The voter rolls the occupiers had were not verified," adds Kherson journalist Ivan Antypenko. "If someone wasn't on the list, their name was just written into a table. You could technically vote 300 times in a day. There were no controls whatsoever."
The practice of writing names in by hand was visible in several propaganda segments. Notably, the faces of so-called election commission members were blurred in some of those videos.
Door-to-door “voting” in Kherson wasn’t widespread, adds Volodymyr Molchanov. He estimates that no more than 10% of homes were visited this way. According to him, the occupiers weren’t even trying to get as many votes as possible.
Viacheslav Husakov shares a similar opinion: there was no need to pressure people to vote because the result was already known in advance.
One “polling station” was set up at the Kulish Regional Drama Theater, a location where voting had never taken place before — meaning no voters were actually registered there. But the site was used heavily for filming propaganda segments.
"There was a line of people with identical smiles, waving little Russian flags like Teletubbies. Around the corner, buses were waiting to take them back to Crimea," Molchanov says.
Activists from the “Yellow Ribbon” resistance movement also confirmed this:
“We scanned the faces using facial recognition software and can say for now that these people were brought in from temporarily occupied Crimea and Russia’s Rostov region,” the group said in a statement.
According to eyewitnesses, most Kherson residents took part in the “referendum” reluctantly — if at all. Viacheslav Husakov, who was in Kherson during the days of voting, recalls mostly empty streets, with locals avoiding going outside to steer clear of the mobile polling stations or simply not opening their doors. This silent refusal was a form of protest.
Some residents even got creative to avoid participation. For example, writer Olena Maliarenko, who remained in Kherson during the occupation, recalls that when members of the so-called mobile polling station came to her apartment, she started shouting that she had COVID and began coughing theatrically. That’s how she managed to avoid “voting”.
The Ukrainian government and the Center for National Resistance had issued public appeals urging people not to participate in the sham vote.
Low turnout was also confirmed by Dementii Bilyi, who observed the fake referendum in person. However, he notes that the situation in rural areas was very different from that in the regional capital.
"In villages, where the occupiers could monitor every household, things were much harder," Bilyi explains. "Members of the so-called commissions went door-to-door pressuring people to fill out the 'ballots.' Some refused — and later, they were taken to the 'basement'".
There was also the human factor, he adds — some commission members were more aggressive simply by personal choice.
Thus, the political analyst explained that in rural areas, it was dangerous for people to vote against the annexation — or to refuse to “vote” at all — once representatives of the so-called election commissions were already standing at their doorstep. Only truly courageous individuals dared to make that choice, he noted.
Numbers That Were Known in Advance
In Kherson itself, eyewitnesses say there was no widespread pressure or aggressive door-to-door efforts to force people to “vote.” Volodymyr Molchanov believes this was because no one was actually checking the real number of ballots cast.
According to the political analyst, data from polling stations was simply communicated by phone — no official protocols or ballot transfers were involved.
"So the numbers that Maryna Zakharova, head of the occupation’s central election commission in Kherson, later announced — they were either something she heard over the phone, or just made up herself," Molchanov insists.
Russian authorities claimed that 620,000 voters participated in the "referendum" on joining the Russian Federation. According to the announcement, 497,000 people supposedly voted in favor — about 87% of the total — with an overall voter turnout of nearly 77%. At the same time, pro-Russian media reported that 198 polling stations operated in Kherson Oblast, which is almost four times fewer than during legitimate Ukrainian elections.
There are several reasons to believe these numbers are fabricated — the first being sheer technical impossibility.
As of January 1, 2022, Kherson Oblast had a population of about 1 million people. But in the first six months after Russia's full-scale invasion, over 50% of the population fled the region, according to Yaroslav Yanushevych, the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration. That means that even with 100% voter turnout, there simply weren’t 620,000 people physically present in the region at the time of the “referendum.” Accurately calculating real turnout would have required up-to-date, verified data on eligible voters — which the occupiers did not have or attempt to gather.
The fakeness of the process was further highlighted when a representative of the occupation authorities in Kherson publicly announced “preliminary results” — in violation even of Russian law.
“The current results of the referendum show that the people of Kherson Oblast see their future — and the future of their children — within a unified state, as part of the Russian Federation,” Zakharova stated.
However, under Article 77 of the Federal Constitutional Law on the Referendum of the Russian Federation, “vote counting begins after the end of voting.”
Therefore, even under Russian legislation, this “expression of will” cannot be considered valid, and the published results have no connection to reality.
It’s also worth noting that the ballots used for the “referendum” were printed on standard office paper using an ordinary printer — with no security features whatsoever.
Additionally, the so-called “observers” monitoring the “referendum” were handpicked individuals loyal to the Russian regime, presented in propaganda media as “independent foreign experts.” In Kherson Oblast, one such figure was Thomas Röper, featured in an investigation by the Ukrainian outlet Bihus.Info.
Journalists discovered that Röper has lived in Russia for over 20 years, runs a German-language YouTube channel promoting Russian aggression, and is also the author of a book about Vladimir Putin.
Who Was Held Accountable
After Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated the right-bank part of Kherson Oblast in November 2022, Ukrainian law enforcement began investigating collaborators — particularly those involved in the preparation and execution of the so-called “referendum.”
Maryna Zakharova, the head of the illegal election commission in Kherson Oblast, was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison for collaboration and encroachment on Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inviolability.
Other notorious collaborators also received in-absentia verdicts, including Volodymyr Saldo, the so-called “head of the military-civil administration” of Kherson Oblast, and his “deputy,” Kyrylo Stremousov. Charges were filed against several others: Olha Kulyk (head of the so-called district election commission in Henichesk), Tamara Miroshnychenko (Beryslav district), Olena Sayakhova (Kakhovka district), and Liudmyla Kozlova (Skadovsk district).
In total, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office has referred 669 cases of collaboration to court under the criminal charge of collaborative activity. As of late 2024, 157 individuals have received guilty verdicts, according to a response from the prosecutor’s office to our inquiry.
Some of those convicted received sentences in absentia, as they remain in hiding. However, others — including members of the pseudo-referendum election commissions — have ended up behind bars. For example, Olena Kameneva, a resident of the village of Kostyrka, was sentenced to six years in prison. Lina Danylets from the village of Mylove received a five-year sentence after pleading guilty.
Journalist Viacheslav Husakov believes these individuals didn’t flee Kherson Oblast because they expected to get away with it — a scenario that had played out for many of the organizers of the “referendums” in Russian-occupied territories back in 2014.
However, since the start of the full-scale invasion, cases against collaborators have been actively investigated and brought to court. As of the end of 2024, the Unified State Register of Court Decisions contained more than 2,500 verdicts issued over the past two and a half years under Article 111-1 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code: “Collaborative Activity.” However, most of these convictions relate to the public denial of Russian aggression, rather than direct involvement in organizing referendums or administrative collaboration.
What Were the Consequences?
Simulated election processes are characteristic of authoritarian regimes — including Nazi Germany, which staged the Anschluss of Austria in 1938 through a plebiscite.
That vote was held under Nazi coercion, and even the ballot itself was rigged: the space for marking “yes” was nearly twice as large as the space for marking “no.” The plebiscite was a formality — an attempt to provide a legal veneer for the Third Reich’s first act of aggression.
For Russia, this imitation of democracy in occupied Ukrainian territories served largely as a propaganda tool — a way to present a false narrative to its own population, one in which Russia and its citizens are not aggressors, but liberators.
However, the pseudo-referendum failed to deliver the results the Kremlin had hoped for. On September 30, 2022, a grand ceremony was held in Moscow to celebrate the “accession” of newly occupied regions to Russia. But just six weeks later, on November 11, Russia lost control over the majority of Kherson Oblast.
Since then, Russia’s attempts to portray the “referendum” as a historic achievement have looked increasingly absurd — even in its own media. Nevertheless, in 2023, Moscow minted a commemorative coin marking the anniversary of the “expression of will” on territories it no longer actually controls. Fittingly, the coin was issued with a face value of just three rubles.
