'We came back from hell': Ukrainians evacuated from Russian-occupied Oleshky after years under siege

Olha has one word for what the last few years in Oleshky were like: horror. She said it after stepping off a coach in Ukraine's Chernihiv region, with her husband Viacheslav, their son and daughter, and the family dog beside her. Viacheslav put it another way. "We came back from hell," he said.

The family were among hundreds of residents evacuated from the Russian-occupied city who crossed into northern Ukraine via Belarus on Saturday. Many were reunited with relatives they had not seen in years. Russia seized Oleshky in the first days of its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and the city has since been pinned between the Dnipro River on one side and Russian forces on the other.

Olha and Viacheslav lived there with their son and daughter, both in their 30s. As shelling around them grew heavier, they still feared that leaving might be deadlier than staying, since the routes out were mined and exposed to drone attack. When supplies ran short, the couple said, they crossed minefields earlier this month to look for food. "People were stepping on mines, dying and being maimed, all just to survive," Olha told the BBC. Those too frightened to leave their homes had resorted to cooking garden weeds.

The way out came earlier this week, when a humanitarian ceasefire brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump took effect in the Kherson region. It gave the area its first few days of peace in four years. Residents were given a four-hour window on Friday to leave. A convoy of 25 buses was sent in for up to 750 evacuees, along with ambulances for people with limited mobility.

The journey was long. Evacuees travelled through Russian-occupied territory to southern Russia, flew to Belarus, and then came by bus to a military facility in Chernihiv on Saturday. On the tarmac, where they were processed before moving on, some elderly residents were so weak they had to be carried on stretchers.

There were reunions. Mykhailo Palii's daughters, Dasha and Anya, had feared they might never see him again, and they sprinted across the tarmac screaming and crying as he arrived. After they embraced, Palii described some of what he had kept from them. "A hole was blown into the bathroom," he said. "There were drone attacks and missile strikes. It happened, but I didn't tell them about it because I knew they would worry."

Tetiana and Volodymyr arrived carrying a cat. Their home burned down three years ago, they said, and they had lived since in a neighbour's abandoned house. Leaving was an easy choice. "There's nothing for us to regret leaving," Tetiana said. They have no relatives in the city, and their married children live elsewhere.

Those who got out are thinking of those who did not. Up to 6,000 people, including 200 children, were believed to be still living in Oleshky and the surrounding areas, 1,700 of them in the city itself. "There are still a lot of people left there, living under those conditions," Olha said.

For the evacuees, the next problem is where to go and how to rebuild. Palii said he would look for work to support his family: "There's no job I can't handle. Digging, hoeing, planting, building. I can even do demolition work." Olha said her family has no relatives elsewhere in Ukraine and will stay with acquaintances for an extended period. "If we managed to survive in hell, we'll survive here too," she said.