The US-led West went wild speculating what President Putin might declare during his annual speech at this year’s Victory Day parade, but the person who ultimately ended up surprising them was the new Governor of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, after what he revealed in his exclusive interview with TASS that was released on that same day. It’s in Russian, but Google Translate does a decent job conveying his main points. A lot of it concerned the socio-economic situation in his liberated region of Lenin’s unnatural mini-empire that began crumbling even more following the commencement of Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, but it was the political details that stand out the most.

According to him, the members within his regional administration support reunifying with their historical Russian homeland. To that end, they’re actively working to emulate the Russian economic, legal, and political models following the precedents established by Crimea and Donbass. He denied rumors that Kherson Region will be absorbed into Crimea but said that he assumes that a new federal region will eventually be declared including those two and Zaporozhye Region too. Ahead of that very likely scenario, Saldo revealed that his region changed its coat of arms back to the one that it used to have during the Russian Empire, which he described as “not a replacement, but a return” to history.

Considering his plans to reunify with Russia, it’s therefore naturally important that the Russian language returns to its rightful role in the region after having been viciously oppressed since the US-backed “EuroMaidan” coup in 2014 brought Neo-Nazis to power in Ukraine. Saldo announced that he’s actively working on that and is also planning to correct the historical falsehoods that Kiev included in school textbooks. According to him, they were rewritten at least 10 times in the past eight years, each time removing more and more facts about the Great Patriotic War until he said that there’s nowadays no mention whatsoever of Soviet-era heroes. That’s definitely going to change, he said.

Reflecting on the political insight that Saldo shared in his exclusive interview that was published on Victory Day, it can be concluded that the new Governor of Kherson surprised the West a lot more than President Putin did. Kherson Region is accelerating its reunification with Russia by already using the ruble, emulating its historic homeland’s administrative-economic models, returning the Russian language to its rightful role, and correcting the Neo-Nazis’ falsehoods that were included in school textbooks. In other words, Saldo revealed that the Novorossiya Project is proceeding apace and implied the impending reunification of formerly Southern Ukrainian territory with the Russian Federation.