Famine Grips Occupied Oleshky as Russia Blocks Evacuation Corridor

In the occupied town of Oleshky, in Ukraine's southern Kherson region, a man photographs a bowl of soup he has made from whatever he could find—vegetable scraps, millet, two eggs bartered at enormous cost. His mother traded 2.5 kilograms of sugar to get them. He sends the photo to Tetiana Hasanenko, who runs the Oleshky City Military Administration from Ukrainian-controlled territory, and tells her there is asparagus in the borsch today, no cabbage. It is meant to be good news.

Hasanenko receives messages like this every day. Food deliveries to Oleshky stopped at the end of May. The town has been under Russian occupation since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, and it was nearly destroyed in June 2023 when the Kakhovka Dam was breached, flooding the area almost entirely. Now, as another winter approaches, about 6,000 people remain there, including 180 children. They have no electricity, no gas, no running water. They fetch water from wells. And they are running out of food. "You can't just call this starvation," Hasanenko told Deutsche Welle. "It's a famine."

A resident named Halyna, who asked that her name be changed for safety, described her day at lunchtime: she had eaten nothing. Her plan was flatbread made from water and flour, spread with applesauce, and tea without sugar. People in Oleshky leave their homes only between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., gathering in the market square to trade what little they have. A kilogram of zucchini costs 1,000 rubles—roughly ten euros or eleven dollars. Someone sold a large sack of flour for 200,000 rubles, a price so inflated that Halyna suspected the seller was trying to raise money to escape. Minibuses that once ran south to Skadovsk and beyond, carrying food and passengers, were attacked by drones. Two ambulances replaced them, but one driver was killed on a trip, and for the past month and a half, no ambulances have run at all.

To buy food, residents walk or bicycle twenty kilometers south to the village of Radensk. To be evacuated, they must reach Tarasivka, another twenty kilometers away, and from there catch a minibus or hitchhike to Skadovsk. The route is heavily mined. "You set out and could die along the way," Halyna said. Two women trying to reach food supplies died exactly that way. Scores of people in Oleshky have been injured by mines and explosive devices, but the town's hospital cannot help them. There is a surgeon but no anesthesiologist and no medicine. "If your leg is blown off, you're as good as dead," Halyna said. Hospital patients who once received soup and baked dough in winter now get one and a half spoonfuls of semolina porridge cooked in water and cold tea.

Evacuation talks have been ongoing since last spring. In 2023, Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's parliamentary human rights commissioner, compiled a list of residents who wanted to leave. He identified 358 people who needed urgent evacuation, though he emphasized this was only those he had heard about—the actual number could be much higher among the town's 6,000 residents. "The town has become a death trap," Lubinets said. Preliminary agreements were reached between Kyiv and Moscow: the Ukrainian military would ensure a ceasefire, and the International Committee of the Red Cross would assist with evacuation. But Russia, according to Lubinets, "has not reaffirmed its willingness" to proceed "for quite some time."

Hasanenko says residents had hoped evacuation would begin at any moment. They wanted to believe there was a way out. But months have passed, and Russia has not moved. The occupying authorities could establish what Hasanenko calls a "green corridor" and move people deeper into occupied territory, but they have not done so. Many residents lack either Russian or Ukrainian passports. Many have no cash. The mines remain. Winter is coming. "I can't give them any hope at all," Hasanenko said.