Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
While the Germans were indeed encouraged to believe the D-Day landings were going to be somewhere other than Normandy, I think the mechanism used by the Allies was a bit more subtle than simply "broadcasting their intentions".
I read in some publication that the Russians are taking the first steps to make Kherson a Peoples Republic like Luhansk/Donets and that the Ukrainian announcement could be a warning shot across the bows of any Ukrainians who might be thinking that it would be nice to be a governor/ leading personality of such an entity: namely that they might only be in situ for a couple of months with an uncertain future afterwards.
There is then the obvious follow-on of inducing the Russians to move troops from the fighting around Donetsk.