Russian occupation of Kherson Oblast

The ongoing military occupation of Ukraine's Kherson Oblast (Russian: Херсонская область, romanized: Khersonskaya oblast) by Russian forces began on 24 February 2022, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine from Crimea. It was administrated under a Russian-controlled military-civilian administration until 30 September 2022, when the Russian government declared it had annexed the territory. Since then it administers it as an unrecognized federal subject of Russia.

Russia captured the city of Kherson on 1 March 2022. Kherson was the only regional capital that Russia has managed to capture in the 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 staged 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 neighboring Mykolaiv Oblast. The United Nations condemned the annexations as violating international law.

In October 2022, as a Ukrainian 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. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the Kherson region remained a "subject of the Russian Federation" despite the withdrawal.