KYIV, Ukraine — As Russian forces pillage occupied Kherson and Moscow rushes in reinforcements ahead of a looming battle for the strategic southern port, the city’s Kremlin-appointed proxy rulers dispatched a team to a majestic 18th-century stone cathedral on a special mission.
They were sent to steal the bones of Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin.
The memory of the 18th-century commander is vivid for those in the Kremlin bent on restoring the Russian imperium. It was Potemkin who persuaded his lover, Catherine the Great, to annex Crimea in 1783. The founder of Kherson and Odesa, he sought the creation of a “New Russia,” a dominion that stretched across what is now southern Ukraine to the Black Sea, and when President Vladimir V. Putin invaded Ukraine in February with the goal of restoring part of a long-lost empire, he invoked Potemkin’s vision.
Now, with Mr. Putin’s army having failed in its march toward Odesa and threatened with being driven from Kherson, Mr. Putin’s grand plans are in jeopardy — but the belief among Kremlin loyalists in what they view as Russia’s rightful empire still runs deep.
So it was that a team of Kremlin loyalists descended into a crypt below a solitary white marble gravestone inside St. Catherine’s Cathedral.
To reach Potemkin’s remains, they would have opened a trapdoor in the floor and climbed down a narrow passageway, according to people who have visited the crypt. There they would have found a simple wooden coffin on a raised dais, marked with a single cross.
Under the lid of the coffin, a small black bag held Potemkin’s skull and bones, carefully numbered.
The Russian-appointed head of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said that Potemkin’s remains were taken to an undisclosed location east of the Dnipro River, where Russian forces may be making preparations to retreat as Ukrainian troops edge closer to the city.
“We transported to the left bank the remains of the holy prince that were in St. Catherine’s Cathedral,” Mr. Saldo said in an interview broadcast on Russian television. “We transported Potemkin himself.”
Local Ukrainian activists confirmed that the church has been looted and that, along with the bones, statues of venerated Russian heroes have been removed.
Simon Sebag Montefiore, the author of the book “Catherine the Great and Potemkin,” said in an interview that shortly after its publication in 2000, the Kremlin contacted him to say how much Mr. Putin admired his work. But Mr. Montefiore said on Thursday that Mr. Putin’s reading of history was deeply flawed, and that his war has reduced to ruins Ukrainian cities such as Mariupol and Mykolaiv that Potemkin and early Russian imperialists helped to build. (The term “Potemkin village” was coined to describe an impressive facade constructed to hide an undesirable state of affairs, although Mr. Montefiore says the term was incorrectly ascribed to the prince, whose achievements in present-day Ukraine were real.)
“Potemkin would have despised Putin and everything he stands for,” he said.
But the bones’ importance to Russia, Mr. Montefiore added, underscored the “power of history and the power of dead bodies,” especially for the Kremlin, which has built its case for war on a distorted version of history.
Kremlin loyalists have made no effort to hide the theft. Mr. Saldo said: “These were my decisions because these are my powers, my duties and responsibilities.”
