Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-backed Kherson administration, in his workplace in Kherson on July 20. A portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the wall behind him.
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Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-backed Kherson administration, in his workplace in Kherson on July 20. A portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the wall behind him.
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Kirill Stremousov, the general public face of the Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Kherson area, has died in a car accident, in accordance with the collaborationist authorities there.
The area’s Moscow-installed administration head, Vladimir Saldo, introduced the loss of life Wednesday on the Telegram social media app, calling Stremousov, his appearing deputy governor and occupation spokesman, “one of the brightest.”
There had been no additional particulars in regards to the reported loss of life.
Stremousov, Ukrainian by delivery, was a 45-year-old pro-Russian propagandist identified for posting voluminous movies — usually from his car.
“The ‘Ukronazis,’ pushed by their American masters, are forced to face certain death,” he mentioned in one current video, repeating Moscow’s false claims that Ukraine is run by U.S.-backed Nazis.
Stremousov insisted that Russia’s victory was inevitable, however that has turn out to be tougher to promote in current weeks as Russia suffered extra defeats in the area. On Wednesday, Moscow introduced it was pulling troops out of Kherson city, however the Ukrainian authorities mentioned it noticed no indicators Russian forces had been leaving with out a battle. Kherson is a strategically and symbolically vital regional middle that fell comparatively simply to the Russians early in the conflict.
Stremousov had a colourful, eccentric previous. In a video he posted on YouTube in 2017, he holds his toddler daughter by the arm and leg and swings her round as a type of what he calls train, which sparked accusations on-line of kid abuse.
Stremousov ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Kherson and the Ukrainian parliament, and have become a well-known opponent of vaccines through the COVID-19 pandemic.
He initially served in the Kherson area as a Ukrainian authorities fisheries official. Later, he original himself into a gadfly and political blogger who pressed the federal government to assist peculiar residents.
Roman Tsviakh, a fellow civic activist, who now lives in Poland, recalled that Stremousov publicly confronted officers after some residents fell and broke bones in an ice storm a few years again. The subsequent day, the sidewalks had been lined in salt, he recalled.
“He seemed to me to be an honest person who really wanted to work in the interest of people,” mentioned Volodymyr Marus, a journalist who helped practice Stremousov the way to work as a civic activist. But he has since modified his thoughts in regards to the collaborator.
Ukrainian intelligence officers and previous associates informed NPR that Stremousov had a thirst for wealth and commenced utilizing his weblog to extort cash from native companies in change for not publicizing their wrongdoing. Tsviakh says this conduct was common, however a part of Kherson’s tradition of corruption, which made the area a straightforward goal for Russian infiltration in advance of the February invasion.
“People like Stremousov evolved because of a broken system,”Tsviakh mentioned.
Stremousov allied himself with officers reminiscent of Saldo and others who publicly switched sides and backed the Russians in February.
“When the war began, all of them started to work as collaborators,” mentioned Marus. “They were not pro-Russian. These were just people who wanted money. They had no sense of patriotism or purpose. They are simply traitors to Ukraine.”
Kateryna Malofieieva contributed to this story.