So following my previous post I have decided that I'm going to map out all the administrative divisions of the 4 regions Russia annexed in September 2022 which were introduced by the new Russian administrations. There needs to be good maps of these for anyone mapping the current situation for their regional or world maps and even more so in the future when this is all over, and since no one one the Internet seems to have tried doing this so far I guess it's up to me as the only one who cares enough and has even noticed they've changed as most people seem to think they still use the Ukrainian divisions or just copy-pasted the old pre-reform ones.
So like I said I'll be doing all 4 regions from west to east, starting with the Kherson Oblast as I've already started and from then on I'll go to the Zaporozhye Oblast and the DPR which have undergone the most significant alterations and finish off with the LPR. So without further ado here's the administrative divisions of the
Kherson Oblast according to the Russian-installed government:
It consists of 20 districts and 2 municipalities.
The list:
-Kherson Municipality
-Novaya Kakhovka Municipality
-Aleksandrovka District
-Alyoshky District
-Belozyorka District
-Berislav District
-Velikaya Aleksandrovka District
-Velikaya Lepetikha District
-Verkhniy Rogachik District
-Vysokopolye District
-Genichesk District
-Golaya Pristan District
-Gornostayevka District
-Ivanovka District
-Kalanchak District
-Kakhovka District
-Nizhne Serogozy District
-Novotroitskoye District
-Skadovsk District
-Snigiryovka District
-Chaplinka District
For comparison here is the old pre-2020 Ukrainian administrative division of the region on which the new Russian one is based on:
It consisted of 18 districts and 4 municipalities.
The new administrative division introduced by the Russians similar as the old pre-reform Ukrainian division, but with a few changes. These are:
-The
Snigiryovka District created out of most of the territory of the former
Snihurivka District of the Mykolaiv region, with the exception of the post-reform Hrokhivske hromada and some northern areas, and annexed to the Kherson Region with it's center in Snigiryovka (Snihurivka).
-The
Aleksandrovka District created out of the territory of the post-reform Hrokhivske hromada and annexed to the Kherson region with it's center in Aleksandrovka (Oleksandrivka).
-The Kinburn Peninsula of the Mykolaiv region with it's 3 villages annexed to the Kherson region and added to the
Golaya Pristan District.
-The Kakhovka municipality abolished and merged into the
Kakhovka District.
-The Hola Prystan (Golaya Pristan) municipality abolished and merged into the
Golaya Pristan District.
It's important to remember that currently the Russian administration does not control all of the region so some of these divisons are only theoretical. This includes the regional center of Kherson. Currently the city of Genichesk serves as the temporary seat of the Russian administration.
This post is not in any way political or an endorsement of anything.
Source: https://khogov.ru/deyatelnost-ukazi-gubernatora-2023/
Some other notes:
Some of you might have spotted that I have added a panhandle to the Snihurivka District that goes into the Velyka Oleksandrivka District. This is an unclear of the border which I have now changed my opinion on as to how to show it. Let me explain. Maps are quite inconsistent with this section of the border. Some show a straight border and some show the panhandle. Generally less accurate maps don't show it, like
Arcgis which I'm using as a base here, while more detailed and reliable maps like
OpenStreetMap show it, including maps from the Ukrainian government. So with this we can conclude that it exists. So why didn't I show it in my previous post? Well the panhandle itself includes a few fields and a tiny village called Bezimenne. Now the problem is it is not included in the decree provided by the Russian-appointed administration on the settlements included in the Snihurivka district. There is a settlement called Bezimenne included but it almost certainly refers to the slightly larger village next to Snihurivka itself. So with this I came to the conclusion that the Russians probably looked at one of those maps without the panhandle and assigned the settlement to the Velika Oleksandrivka District. But now when making this full map I read through the decree defining the settlements included in that district as well and guess what? It's not included in that one either. So essentially the only conclusion we can make here is the Russians also got confused and kinda forgot about this village. With this I have decided to go with the best we have, so the border as seen on Ukrainian government maps.
Another confusing situation is the tiny uninhabited Pervomayskiy Island, just north of the Kinburn spit. I couldn't find information on whether the Russians claim it or not. To decide tried searching up whether before the 2020 reform it was part of the Pokrovka rural hromada which encompassed the Kinburn Peninsula and it's 3 settlements or the Ochakiv urban hromada, but I also couldn't find anything. Since to my knowledge the Russians never controlled this island, at least not at the time of the annexation, I have decided to not include it.
The last thing I want to talk about is how the organization of the Snihurivka areas makes no sense. So as I mentioned the Russians annexed this area as the Snigiryovka and Aleksandrovka districts. This territory includes most of the former pre-2020 Snihurivka district, but not all of it, a few northern villages are not included. Now this is likely because the Russians never controlled them, but as we've seen from the annexations of the entirety of the 4 regions the Russians don't have a problem with annexing areas they don't control, so why did they go to the trouble of being conservative here? And the most outrageously illogical thing is the whole situation with splitting the former district into two. Aside from the recreated Snihurivka (Snigiryovka) district there is a new Oleksandrivka (Aleksandrovka) district, created out of the post-reform Hrokhivske hromada. This district is tiny, city sized, and includes only villages with not cities or even towns. Why create such an unviable rural district out of nowhere? Especially since, as you will see with my next posts, the new Russian administrations in the annexed regions, when making alterations to the old Ukrainian system when bringing it back, generally tend to merge districts rather than create new ones. Also for some reason they bothered changing the center from the small village of Hrokhivske to the small village of Oleksandrivka. So why did they split the former Snihurivka district into two? Well it's probably because when they occupied the territory they created an administration for the Snihurivka hromada and Hrokhivske hromada, as before the annexation the occupation administrations used the post-2020 administrative divisions. Now when they annexed these two into the Kherson region and then to Russia they probably just changed their status from hromada administrations to district administrations to be done with it. Now this would make sense but the post-2020 hromadas in the rest of the region also didn't quite match the pre-2020 districts so when they recreated those faithfully they had to merge and create some administrations. So why not here? I couldn't tell you. Also in connection with that while the new Aleksandrovka District follows the borders of the Hrokhivske hromada the new Snihurivka District does not (though on the clickable map seen on the website of the Russian administration it does, but that map is clearly wrong and probably made with whatever shapefiles they could find). A few villages in the north of the post-2020 hromada were not included (as mentioned earlier), but the western parts of the former pre-2020 district were included. This new Snigiryovka district is a Frankenstein-esque monstrosity with some parts removed and some parts added with no consistency. Maybe if the Russians ever recapture this area they'll fix this mess.
Also another interesting thing I've discovered while looking through the decrees of the Russian-appointed governor on which this map is based is that despite the Kherson region being being an oblast of the Russian Federation, thus meaning theoretically it should have Russian as it's sole official language, according to one of the decrees both Russian and Ukrainian are official languages of the region (though of course Russian is preferred). In addition in the Novotroitskoe and Genichesk districts the Crimean Tatar language is also official alongside them, mirroring the situation in Crimea.
Anyways that's all, do ya'll think I've gone insane yet?