Good newsEvacuees Leave Starving Oleshky Under the War's Longest Truce
A local ceasefire let aid reach Oleshky and an evacuation run without reported incident, in the first joint relief operation of the war. The number evacuated is unconfirmed, and the truce has since expired.
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People who had been eating garden weeds to survive left the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky last week, and aid went in. A local ceasefire in the Kherson region, the most significant truce of the war, made both possible. Al Jazeera calls the joint operation by Russia and Ukraine the first of its kind in four years and eight months of fighting. The truce has since expired, and the count of people who left is still not public.
Why the city needed it
Oleshky sits on the front line, trapped between the Dnipro River and Russian forces. The BBC reported when the truce began on 27 October that the city had no electricity, gas or water for three years and no shops open. Only one hospital was partly working, a few days a week. Roads out were mined and watched by drones, and residents told the BBC they were close to starvation.
Before the war the city had 24,000 residents. Kyiv believed up to 6,000 people, including 200 children, remained in Oleshky and its surroundings, with only 1,700 in the city itself, the BBC said. The Associated Press (AP) gives an estimate of 2,000 for the people left in the city when the ceasefire took hold.
What the truce delivered
The White House said First Lady Melania Trump helped broker the deal, and Pope Leo XIV had asked both governments to allow aid and evacuations. An aid convoy entered on Friday 30 October. Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova said residents who chose to stay received food, hygiene products and fuel for generators, and that the operation went ahead without incidents. That is one party’s account.
Evacuees chose between Ukrainian-held and Russian-held territory. Those bound for Ukraine travelled through Crimea and flew from Anapa to Belarus, then crossed into Ukraine’s Chernihiv region on Saturday by bus, AP reported. Relatives and volunteers from the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières and World Central Kitchen met them with food and aid. Crews also unloaded crates of pets, including cats, dogs, a parrot and a raccoon, a reminder that many people had stayed for their animals. One evacuee told AP that staple food had been gone since spring and that landmines or drone strikes were killing residents daily.
| Figure | Who gave it | What it was |
|---|---|---|
| 527 | Ukraine’s prime minister, Serhiy Koretskyi | Residents to return to Ukrainian-held territory; he later apologised for giving it |
| More than 750 | Melania Trump, on social media | People the convoy could safely evacuate |
| About 2,000 | AP | People remaining in the city when the truce began |
| 1,700 | Kyiv, via the BBC | People living in the city itself |
Sources: Al Jazeera, AP and BBC reports, 27 to 31 October 2026. No official final figure has been published.
What came next
Ukrainian authorities have deliberately not said how many left, to protect people who stayed and future missions, AP says. The ceasefire was due to end on Sunday evening. On Monday, a Russian strike on an aid distribution centre at Komyshuvakha in Zaporizhzhia region killed at least 26 people, according to Ukrainian officials. President Zelenskyy said Russia had missed a chance to build on Oleshky, and the Kremlin said no similar missions were planned for now.
What the week shows is narrower than peace. A pause that holds for a few days can move several hundred people and a convoy of food through a mined road. Whether it can be repeated is the open question. Ukraine and Russia had both said they planned more humanitarian missions, and the next test is whether the talks revive them, with US-led talks due in Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November.
