Did the citizens of the Ukrainian city of Kherson welcome the Russian invading forces, when they entered the city as nonaggressive liberators? No, that's not true: While there is a possibility that some citizens might have welcomed Russian soldiers, various sources, including CNN and Reuters, reported on protests against the Russian occupation of Kherson. These reports show they were, in fact, the minority. The claims disputing Russian violence, are contradicted by reports of Russian troops systematically terrorizing and torturing civilians. Evidence of crowds of people welcoming the return of Ukrainian soldiers, after their retake of Kherson, is further prove that the majority of the people were not happy about the Russian occupation.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok where it was published by @vlad_sk_1954 on April 20, 2022, under the title "You won't see this on 'hnojka' and 'narkoza' (derogatory references to major television stations in Slovakia)." It opened with a Slovak text under a video from the Russian mainstream web Komsomolskaya Pravda:
"This is how you treat murderers? It's humorous how naive people are in believing capitalist propaganda."
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed May 10 13:31:24 2023 UTC)
The video on TikTok shows an old lady with daffodil flowers allegedly welcoming Russian soldiers in Kherson, Ukraine. The video was originally published on the YouTube channel of Komsomolskaya Pravda, ("Young Communist League Truth"), a mainstream Russian news outlet from the communist youth league, Central Council of the Komsomol. It implies that Russian soldiers have not committed war crimes during their occupation of Ukraine and that the local population was happy to see them enter the city.
