Oleshky Evacuation Preparations Proceed Under Secrecy as Ceasefire Holds and Routes Remain Unconfirmed

At 3 a.m. Kyiv time on October 27, a ceasefire took hold in Oleshky, a town on the Dnipro River in Ukraine's Kherson region that Russia has occupied since 2022. By about 8 a.m., crews had started clearing mines from the road leading in. Those two facts are about all that is publicly confirmed about an operation now being prepared in near-total silence.

The ceasefire was brokered by Melania Trump, according to Myroslava Kharchenko, a lawyer with the Save Ukraine Foundation, who described the preparations to Deutsche Welle. Her organization says it has rescued at least 300 civilians from Oleshky over the past six months. She says she does not yet know whether any people have actually been evacuated. What happens inside the town, she says, is the responsibility of the military, and everyone involved has been asked to keep strict confidentiality, since a careless remark or action could endanger the whole effort.

The people it is meant to help have been isolated for years. After the occupation in 2022 and the flooding that followed the destruction of the nearby Kakhovka dam in 2023, residents were cut off from the outside world, and every access route to the town was mined. Former residents who escaped have told DW of hunger, no medicine, and no electricity or water. About 2,000 people are still there.

Kharchenko says she can see some of the groundwork being laid through closed local chat groups. Registration lists and application forms are circulating, and residents are filling them in themselves. Organizers are contacting people who had earlier asked to be evacuated to check details such as dates of birth and current addresses. They are also asking for contact details of neighbors or relatives nearby or in the same building, because communications are extremely unreliable.

Health information is being gathered too. Among those hoping to leave are people who are ill, have limited mobility, or are recovering from recent injuries, including blast and mine wounds. Kharchenko says she expects the organizers to make sure medical help is available to those who need it.

The route itself has not been disclosed. Kharchenko says a crossing by the Dnipro would be extremely dangerous and that she has heard no confirmation it has been approved. She considers it likely that people will travel through occupied Ukrainian territory, and possibly through Russia, before reaching Ukraine. None of this has been made public for security reasons.

She says the evacuation is not expected to happen in a single day, which she welcomes: she hopes those who leave safely in the first stage will encourage others. Fear in the town is intense. There have been numerous provocations, and this is not the first attempt to set up such a route or humanitarian corridor, so suspicion runs deep and some residents may hold back at first. The foundation estimates that around 500 people may eventually be evacuated.

The timeline is unclear. Kharchenko notes that the roads into the city must be cleared, and she understands many streets inside Oleshky are mined as well. A hospital there needs to be emptied of patients, and a morgue nearby holds bodies that must be recovered, identified, and examined to establish causes of death. She does not know whether that work will fall under the corridor arrangement. She thanked Melania Trump for drawing attention to the situation, which she called genocide by the Russian Federation, and said her gratitude will grow once most people are out of the combat zone and in Ukrainian government-controlled territory. Statements from both the Russian and Ukrainian sides have been very cautious. For now, the signs to watch are the mine clearing and the first departures.