The bones were kept in a crypt beneath the cathedral nave. Catherine’s Cathedral, in Kherson, built by Potemkin himself. His skull and at least several other bones-which ones, exactly, is a mystery-were eventually brought to St. It was then that the Russians did something particularly strange: They kidnapped the bones of Grigory Potemkin. By October, this new Potemkin village was collapsing, and the resurgent Ukrainian army was approaching the outskirts of Kherson. Even as the occupiers held a ludicrous referendum, designed to show that Ukrainians had chosen Russia, the Russian army was quietly preparing to flee. Partisans fought back inside the city, with car bombs and sabotage. In September, Putin held a ceremony in the Kremlin declaring Kherson and other occupied territories to be part of Russia.

Russian soldiers kidnapped the mayor, tortured city employees, murdered civilians, and stole children. In a bid to restore Potemkin’s cities to Russian suzerainty, Russia occupied Kherson in early March of 2022, at the outset of a campaign to annihilate both Ukraine and the idea of Ukraine. The tale also evokes something we recognize to be true, not just of imperial Russia but of Putin’s Russia, where mind-boggling efforts are made to please the leader-efforts that these days include telling him he is winning a war that he is most definitely not winning. These villages probably never existed, but the story has endured for a reason: The sycophantic courtier, creating false images for the empress, is a figure we know from other times and other places. The story goes that Potemkin built fake villages along her route, populated with fake villagers exuding fake prosperity. In 1787, Catherine paid a six-month visit to Crimea and the land then known as New Russia. The rest of the world remembers Potemkin differently, for something that we would now call a disinformation campaign. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

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