Civilians Begin Evacuation from Besieged Russian-Held Oleshky in First Joint Relief Operation of War

On Friday morning, in heavy rain, residents of Oleshky gathered to wait for a convoy, and when members of Kyiv's delegation arrived late in the morning to prepare the way, footage on social media showed tearful people embracing them. The city sits on the Russian-occupied bank of the Dnipro River, opposite Kherson, and the operation that followed was the first joint relief effort of its kind in four years and eight months of war.

The convoy consisted of 25 buses and ambulances. It brought food and medicine into the city and took out anyone who wanted to leave, for either Russia or Ukraine. A localised ceasefire in Ukraine's southern Kherson region made it possible: it allowed the roads out of Oleshky to be de-mined. Ukrainian territory lies just 3 miles (5km) away, but evacuees cannot simply cross. They will travel to the southern Russian city of Anapa, fly to Belarus, and then go by road across the border into Ukraine's Chernihiv region.

Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party and a member of the delegation, confirmed that some people were already travelling to Anapa. "From there, they will fly by plane to Belarus, and then travel by bus to their homes," he said. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's presidential office, who is not part of the delegation, wrote online that the humanitarian operation was under way. Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, was on the ground coordinating with his Russian counterpart, Yana Lantratova.

How many people actually left is not yet clear. Earlier reports suggested more than 500 wanted to move to Ukrainian territory, but the number who travelled in the convoy was unconfirmed. On video, a woman who gave her name as Anna, asked by a delegation member whether she was packed, said she was on bus 20 and her son on bus 17, headed to Ukraine.

Oleshky's population has fallen to about 2,000 since the war began, according to authorities and volunteers, among them about 50 children. Months of severe food and medical shortages have brought warnings of starvation. Many who stayed describe risking their lives on mine-strewn roads to find food and water, and some say they have lived on a cup of rice or buckwheat a day, occasionally with a tomato, a cucumber or wild plants. One woman told Ukrainian TV, "We've been through so much here in these five years." An older woman preparing to leave said that with better health they might have stayed a little longer, "but that's it. We just want to be with our children."

Several hundred people, mainly older residents, have chosen to remain. One woman told Lubinets that the trouble was that many were staying. He answered that he had been told it was their own choice, and that officials would at least try to make sure humanitarian aid keeps getting through. Ksenia Arkhipova, a volunteer who once lived in Oleshky and still speaks with people there, told the Associated Press that large numbers of Russian military personnel are in the city, checking empty houses and sometimes moving into them, and pressuring residents to evacuate to Russia rather than Ukraine.

Russian troops seized Oleshky in the first days of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. It has since suffered extensive damage and was badly flooded after the destruction of the upriver Kakhovka dam in June 2023.

The convoy came under a ceasefire that US first lady Melania Trump claimed to have helped broker, a rare instance of cooperation between the warring sides. Lubinets said it was the first time since 2022 that a ceasefire had been set along so long a stretch of the front and held for so long. The Kremlin, however, called it a special case that is "difficult to extrapolate" to the wider search for a peace settlement. What to watch now is whether the truce holds and whether aid keeps reaching those who stayed.