Saldo: Ukraine’s gangster governor - part 3 - podcast

The announcement came as a surprise. Eight months after Russian troops had taken Kherson, a Russian general popped up on state TV, standing in front of a map and declared his forces were withdrawing from the city.

As investigations correspondent Tom Burgis tells Michael Safi, just like that, the tens of thousands of Russian soldiers who had been occupying the city were gone – and with them the regional governor for the occupation, Volodymyr Saldo.

But they had not gone far. While Kherson city began to operate more freely, albeit under regular mortar fire from the Russians, on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River, the occupation continued. That means a culture of Stalinist-style repression, torture chambers, extortion and intimidation. It continues today and for those who know which levers to pull, it can be very, very lucrative.