Evacuees Leave Russian-Occupied Oleshky as Kyiv Claims Strike on Rocket Fuel Plant

On Saturday, October 31, hundreds of people walked out of Oleshky, a town in Ukraine's southern Kherson region that Russia has occupied since 2022, and reached territory controlled by Kyiv. They were the first evacuees to get out under a localized ceasefire, and their departure ended months of Ukrainian demands that Russia let civilians leave after food deliveries to the town stopped earlier this year.

Oleshky sits close to the front line. In recent weeks it has faced a severe humanitarian crisis. An estimated 2,000 civilians remain there, out of a pre-invasion population of 24,000. Both sides recently agreed to a local truce so those people could be extracted. Moscow and Kyiv each credited the US first lady, Melania Trump, with brokering it.

Residents were given two options: go to Russia, or travel through Belarus to the part of Ukraine under Kyiv's control. The evacuees who came by the second route arrived on Saturday. The truce began on Tuesday and is due to end on Sunday night.

Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said the effort demanded an enormous amount of work. He described some of those who came out: a one-year-old baby and a 94-year-old resident were among them. Many brought their animals, including dogs, cats, a parrot and a raccoon. Lubinets said he hopes the Oleshky arrangement can be replicated elsewhere. DW also published photos of evacuees reuniting with family members after they fled.

The same day, Ukraine's military said it had struck a factory making solid rocket fuel in Russia's Rostov region. According to the Ukrainian account, drones and Neptune missiles hit the Kamensky plant in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, setting a warehouse ablaze and damaging four production workshops. The military said the plant supplies fuel for ammunition used by Russia's Uragan, Smerch and Tornado-S multiple-launch rocket systems, as well as other missiles and air-launched weapons. Kyiv also reported hitting four Russian military supply depots in occupied parts of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk regions. None of these claims has been independently verified.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Istanbul for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with Black Sea shipping on the agenda. He wrote on X that Ukraine was working to strengthen the protection of its people, its bilateral partnership with Türkiye, and real diplomatic prospects. He also planned to meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based Orthodox Christian leader.

The US embassy in Moscow warned of a credible threat of a mass casualty event at the Tsaritsyno Museum Reserve, a complex of palaces and gardens in southern Moscow built on the orders of Catherine the Great in the late 18th century. The embassy said Washington was coordinating a response with Russian authorities. Russia's FSB said it had received the warning and was doing appropriate work in response, according to Russian news agencies.

In Atlanta, G20 foreign ministers skipped their traditional family photo on Friday after objections from several European countries, Australia and Canada to standing beside Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The US State Department pulled the photo from the agenda to avoid a distraction. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said talking with Lavrov was not a concession to Russia but normal, and that Europe and the US were on the same side. Asked whether Lavrov's presence, and a possible appearance by Vladimir Putin at the December G20 summit in Doral, Florida, signaled normalization, he said engaging an adversary of European freedom and security was necessary.

The Oleshky truce is set to lapse Sunday night, and the question is whether more of the roughly 2,000 remaining residents can leave before then, or whether the arrangement is extended or repeated elsewhere.