To give this colonizing project legitimacy, Moscow needed collaborators. There was a small pool of locals from whom to recruit. Olha estimated 1,000 to 1,500 people backed the invading army, from a population of 300,000 in Kherson and 1 million in the region. “They were like mushrooms after the rain. They popped up. Ugly red mushrooms,” she said. “They feel like they are masters of the situation.” Locals considered these pro-Russian agitators “to be loonies,” she added. Now these careerists joined the new administration, together with officials from Russia.
