I never much looked into the ethnic history of various regions of modern Ukraine.I had some high level ideas. Recently there was this ICC set of charges brought against Putin for 'kidnapping Ukrainian children'. Someone here, maybe Libertas wrote about Russians invading or squatting in Ukraine. I see ethnic Ukrainians moving to Russian cities for economic opportunities.
Here is what I found recently.Mykolaiv is a city on a river that feeds into the Dnipro and is west of Kherson city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MykolaivEthnicity 1897[39] 1926[40] 1939[41] 1959[42] 1989[43] 2001[43] 2017[44]
Ukrainians 8.5% 29.9% 49.7% 59.7% 63.2% 72.6% 84%
Russians 66.3% 44.6% 31.0% 30.3% 31.2% 22.6% 12%
As of 2017, 63% of the population spoke Russian at home, 7% Ukrainian, and 28% spoke both Ukrainian and Russian equally.[44]
Kherson city
The city was founded by decree of Catherine the Great on 18 June 1778 on the high bank of the Dnieper as a central fortress of the Black Sea Fleet after the Russian annexation of the territory in 1774. The city was established in place of the Russian-built fort or sconce "Saint Alexander" which existed at least since 1737 and also served as one of administrative centers of the Zaporizhian Sich and run by local Cossacks. The fort was built during the Russo-Turkish War and improved some 30 years later.
In 1897 the population of the city was 59,076 of which, on the basis of their first language, almost half were recorded as Great Russian, 30% as Jewish, and 20% Ukrainian.[8]
Ethnicity
As of Ukrainian National Census in 2001, the ethnic groups living within Kherson included:
Ukrainians – 76.6%
Russians – 20.0%
Other – 3.4%
Languages
Languages 1897[72] 2001[73]
Ukrainian 19.6% 53.4%
Russian 47.2% 45.3%
Yiddish 29.1%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KharkivKharkiv was founded in 1654 as a fortress, and grew to become a major centre of industry, trade, and Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century, the city was predominantly Russian in population, but as industrial expansion drew in further labor from the distressed countryside, and as the Soviet Union moderated previous restrictions on Ukrainian cultural expression, Ukrainians became the largest ethnic group in the city by the eve of World War II. From December 1919 to January 1934, Kharkiv was the first capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Ethnicity
Ethnic group 1897[40] 1926 1939 1959[41] 1989[136] 2001[139][140][dubious – discuss]
Ukrainians 25.9% 38.6% 48.5% 48.4% 50.4% 62.8%
Russians 63.2% 37.2% 32.9% 40.4% 43.6% 33.2%
Jews 5.7% 19.5% 15.6% 8.7% 3.0% 0.7
