Hundreds of people, and many pets, arrived back in Ukraine on Saturday afternoon after being evacuated from the frontline city of Oleshky under a ceasefire that Pope Leo XIV called for and first lady Melania Trump helped to negotiate. Dmytro had not seen his wife Larisa for 1,711 days. He had been counting. When the couple finally reunited on Saturday afternoon, both wrapped in Ukrainian flags, Dmytro did not hold back.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the arrival of the evacuees on Telegram, thanking the first lady for her help with the mediation. Ukraine's ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets travelled to Oleshky to personally escort the evacuees into Ukrainian-controlled territory, becoming the first high-profile Ukrainian official to openly travel to occupied areas under Russian control. Access routes to Oleshky have been heavily mined and littered with drone and vehicle debris, and evacuation across the Dnipro River directly into Ukrainian-controlled territory is not possible.

The return leg of the evacuation

This report covers the return leg: the arrival back in Ukraine of people evacuated from a city on the front line, after years of separation for some families. It follows earlier reporting of the Oleshky evacuations themselves, and it does not repeat that departure as new news. What is new here is the homecoming itself, the scale of it in hundreds of people, and the mediation behind it, which brought together a papal call for a ceasefire and the first lady's negotiation.

For the families involved, the numbers tell only part of the story. A count of 1,711 days is more than four and a half years, and the reunion, wrapped in flags and in public, was the visible end of that separation. For the wider war, the return is a limited, local step: a humanitarian mission from one frontline town, not a wider settlement.