Oleshky evacuations begin under fragile ceasefire
A town cut off
Hundreds of residents of Oleshky, a town in southern Ukraine's Kherson region held by Russian forces since April 2022, are being evacuated under a local ceasefire that took effect earlier in the week. Ukrainian authorities say around 2,000 people, including some 50 children, had been trapped in the badly damaged municipality, which ran out of food and other supplies in September and has been without electricity, gas and medicine. The operation offers the first sustained chance of relief for a community that has endured months of isolation. This is a new stage from the ceasefire agreement reported on 25 October: the evacuations themselves are now under way.
A fragile corridor
An aid convoy carrying food and medical supplies set off overnight towards the town, after Russian and Ukrainian officials confirmed on Thursday that demining of the routes was complete and the humanitarian mission was ready to proceed. The localised ceasefire, announced on 23 October and brokered with the involvement of US First Lady Melania Trump, is set to expire on Sunday, leaving only a narrow window for the operation. Ukraine's ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, travelled to escort evacuees into Ukrainian-controlled territory, the first senior Ukrainian official to openly travel into occupied territory under the arrangement.
Numbers still unclear
How many people will actually leave remains uncertain. Kyiv's prime minister, Sergiy Koretskyi, retracted an earlier remark to parliament about the number planning to evacuate, saying there were no exact figures while the rescue operation was ongoing and the data kept changing. Reports indicate the evacuation route would run through Russia to Belarus before re-entering Ukraine via the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, though officials have given no further detail. Fighting elsewhere in Ukraine has continued, with Russian strikes reported on Kyiv, Kharkiv and an industrial facility near Kremenchuk.
