Kherson Oblast

The Kherson Oblast is bordered by Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the north, the Black Sea and the disputed region of Crimea on the south, Mykolaiv Oblast on the west, and the Azov Sea and Zaporizhzhia Oblast on the east.

The Dnieper River runs through the oblast which includes the Kakhovka Reservoir.

The oblast includes (within Henichesk Raion) the northern portion of the Arabat Spit, a thin strip of land between the brackish Syvash and the Sea of Azov that is geographically part of the Crimean Peninsula. Due to Russia gaining de facto control of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in 2014 the southern areas of Kherson are the only parts of the Crimean Peninsula under direct Ukrainian control.

The Kherson Oblast is administratively subdivided into 18 raions (districts) and 3 municipalities which are directly subordinate to the oblast government - Kherson (administrative center of the oblast), Nova Kakhovka, and Kakhovka. The Kherson municipality is subdivided into 3 urban districts. All information below is current as of 2015[4]

.* Note: Though the administrative center of the rayon is housed in the city/town that it is named after, cities do not answer to the rayon authorities only towns do; instead they are directly subordinated to the oblast government and therefore are not counted as part of rayon statistics.

At a lower level of administration, these district-level administrations are subdivided into:

• Settlements – 697, including:
  • Villages – 658;
  • Cities/Urban-type settlements – 36, including:
    • Cities of raion subordinance – 4 (Beryslav, Henichesk, Skadovsk, Tavriisk, and Oleshky);
    • Urban-type settlement – 30;
• Selsovets – 260.

The local administration of the oblast' is controlled by the Kherson Oblast Rada. The governor of the oblast is the Kherson Oblast Rada speaker, appointed by the President of Ukraine.

Kherson Oblast State Administration

The population of the oblast is 1,083,367 (2012), which is 2.4% of the total population of Ukraine. It is also ranked 21st by its population. The population density is 38 per km².

About 61.5% or 745,400 people live in urban areas of the Oblast and 38.5% or 467,600 people live in agricultural centers/villages. Men make up 46.7% or 565,400 people of the population, women make up 53.3% or 644,600 people, and pensioners make up 26.2% or 317,400 people of the Oblast population.

Ukrainian National Census (2001):

• Ukrainians – 82.0%
• Russians – 14.1%
• Belarusians – 0.7%
• Meskhetian Turks – 0.5%
• Crimean Tatars – 0.5%
• Others – 2.2%

Typical agricultural landscape of Ukraine, Kherson Oblast

• Askania-Nova
• Lake Lemuria
• Legendary tachanka monument
• Kurhan cemetery
• Shovkunek Art museum
• Saint Yekaterynian Temple

During the 1991 referendum, 90.13% of votes in Kherson Oblast were in favor of the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine. A survey conducted in December 2014 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 1% of the oblast's population supported their region joining Russia, 94.9% did not support the idea, and the rest were undecided or did not respond.[5]

• Subdivisions of Ukraine
• Kherson Governorate

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kherson Oblast.

• Portal of Kherson
• Site of Kherson nationalists
• State Administration of Kherson Region – official site (in Ukrainian)
• Information Card of the Region – official site of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine
• Promo-video about Kherson and South of Ukraine - official YouTube channel of The center of tourism and adventures "ХерсON"