A village named Klisheve (or Klyuchove) was founded at the site of modern Nova Kakhovka in 1891. Nova Kakhovka proper was founded in 1951 in connection with the building of the
Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (KHPP), on the site of the former Klisheve. The village was named after a clear
freshwater spring. By 20 April 1951, the foundation of the first residential building, at Karl Marx, 31, had been laid, followed by the building's opening on 30 May. After the completion of the power plant, most of the workers stayed in Nova Kakhovka. Originally destined to remain a small 20,000-person city of hydroelectric engineers, Nova Kakhovka possessed broad development prospects beyond a highly skilled and experienced population due to its central location in Kherson region and access to cheap electricity, railways, highways and waterways, which opened the way to large-tonnage ships from the mouth of the Dnieper to the Pripyat. However, like many small to medium Ukrainian cities in the 1990s and 2000s, the city saw a massive population decline, as younger people moved to bigger cities such as
Kherson,
Mykolaiv and Kyiv for high paying
white collar jobs.
Russian invasion of Ukraine The Russian occupation of Nova Kakhovka in Ukraine began on 24 February 2022 when Russian forces coming from the direction of occupied
Crimea shelled the hydroelectric plant at around 5:00am, however, the plant was undefended and surrendered without a fight by its staff at 11:00am. The following day Russian forces entered the city proper.
Valerii Brusenskyi was named the first head of the CMA, having been a member of the Kakhovka District Council, elected in the
2020 Ukrainian local elections as a member of
Servant of the People who served as Council Chairman at the time of the invasion. Over the next few months, the city was occupied by Russian forces, and the population was subjected to pro-Russian rallies and the reopening of a Lenin monument. Ukrainian troops responded with acts of resistance, destroying Russian military units and ammunition warehouses, though they were unable to put an end to the Russian presence in Nova Kakhovka. Leontiev would rule through fear of kidnapping, making vocal opponents of Russian occupation disappear, only to be released with significant evidence of torture. Among some of the notable individuals Leontiev would kidnap include;
Mykola Rizak, mayor of
Tavriysk,
Oleh Baturin, a
Kakhovka based journalist,
Dmitry Vasilyev, secretary of the Nova Kakhovka city council, and his wife, Liudmyla Vasilyeva. On 9 January 2023, Russian occupation forces ordered the closing of several area hospitals, and on 20 January, the city hospital was shelled. This was followed by more
mortar attacks, leading to a partial loss of electricity and damage to residential buildings. The illegal and sham
2023 elections in Russian-occupied Ukraine elected the first Deputies to this council, including Leontiev who resigned as mayor to be named the Council's President, effectively retaining his power. The office of mayor was passed to Leontiev's deputy;
Vitaly Gura, the former elder of the village of
Dnipriany, who, prior to the war was head of a government contracted mechanic company that repaired all of Nova Kakhovka's utility vehicles before the war, and was supposedly close with Kovalenko. Instead of ruling through fear, Gura instead ruled through
corruption, giving lucrative government contracts to allies, and creating a network of mini-oligarchs across the city, as a sort of imitation of
Putinism and
Silovikis. Even the CMA reported that Gura's rule saw a general softening of the occupation, with the torture chamber under the Nova Kakhovka police station reportedly being shut down. While experts and observers agree that Russia blew the dam in an effort to prevent a
Kherson Counteroffensive-like counteroffensive from crossing the Dnipro river, Russia still denies it had anything to do with the massive explosion at the hydropower dam under their direct military control, despite studies of footage of the blast showing it could only have come from inside the structure, as a planned
demolition. Gura was also sentenced alongside Leontiev in absentia in March 2023, due to helping orchestrate the kidnapping ring as Leontiev's deputy. In his place Saldo installed Oleh Tarabaka as the new "acting mayor." She still holds this office. Longtime leader of the Ukrainian CMA Brusenskyi would be replaced sometime between August 25–28 with
Oleh Tarabaka the former deputy of Kovalenko. On October 1, Saldo announced that Leontiev was
assassinated by a "
Baba Yaga drone." ==Geography==