KYIV, Ukraine – As looting Russian forces occupy Kherson and Moscow is rushing for reinforcements ahead of a lurking battle for the strategic southern port, the city’s proxy rulers are appointed by the Kremlin. sent a team to a majestic 18th-century stone church on a special mission.
They were sent to steal the bones of Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin.
The memory of the 18th-century general is vivid for those in the Kremlin trying to restore Russian supremacy. It was Potemkin who persuaded his mistress, Catherine the Great, to annex Crimea in 1783. The founder of Kherson and Odesa, he sought to establish a “New Russia,” a dominion that stretched across the country. southern Ukraine to the Black Sea, and when President Vladimir V. Putin invaded Ukraine in February with the goal of restoring part of a long-lost empire, he invoked Potemkin’s vision.
The term “Potemkin village” was coined to describe an impressive facade built to conceal an undesirable condition. Now, with Mr. Putin’s army having failed in its march to Odesa and threatened to be driven out of Kherson, Mr. Putin’s grand plans are in jeopardy – but his faith in the right empire Russia remains deeply rooted in the hearts of Kremlin loyalists.
So it was a team of Kremlin loyalists that went into a crypt beneath a lone white marble headstone inside St. Catherine.
To reach Potemkin’s remains, they would open a trapdoor in the floor and climb down a narrow passage, according to people who had visited the crypt. There they will find a simple wooden coffin on a high pedestal, marked with a cross.
Under the lid of the coffin, a small back pocket contained Potemkin’s skull and bones, carefully numbered.
The head of the Russian-appointed Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said that Potemkin’s remains had been taken to an undisclosed location east of the Dnipro River, where Russian forces may be preparing to withdraw as troops Ukrainian team approaches the city.
“We have transported to the left bank the remains of the holy prince in the Church of St. Catherine,” Mr. Saldo said in an interview broadcast on Russian television. “We transported Potemkin ourselves.”
Local Ukrainian activists confirmed that the church had been looted and that, along with the bones, statues of revered Russian heroes had been removed.
Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of “Catherine the Great and Potemkin,” said in an interview that shortly after its publication in 2000, the Kremlin contacted him to say that Putin admired his work. how are you. But Mr. Montefiore on Thursday said Mr. Putin’s reading of history was profoundly flawed, and that his war left Ukrainian cities like Mariupol and Mykolaiv devastated that Potemkin and the early Russian empires suffered. helped build.
“Potemkin will despise Putin and everything he stands for,” he said.
But the importance of bones for Russia, Mr. Montefiore added, underscores “the power of history and the power of the dead,” especially for the Kremlin, which has built the case for war on a single session. distorted history.
Kremlin loyalists did not try to hide the theft. “This is my decision because it is my right, my duty and my responsibility,” Mr. Saldo said.
