World

Aid Convoy Reaches Oleshky Amid Six‑Day Truce

By Al Jazeera Staff

An aid convoy carrying food and medical supplies entered the Russian‑held town of Oleshky in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Friday, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestia. The arrival came as the six‑day United States‑brokered localised ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine entered its third day. Moscow said the truce in Oleshky could not be linked to a broader ceasefire.

Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets and his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova met in Oleshky overnight, as reported by Russian state TV channel Vesti. Lantratova said 25 buses with at least 750 seats were ready to evacuate residents who wished to leave the city, which was seized by Russian forces soon after Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Evacuations will continue until 2 pm local time (12:00 GMT). Lubinets stated that remaining residents would be able to leave safely and emphasized the importance of maintaining the six‑day US‑brokered ceasefire.

On Thursday, Russia and Ukraine announced that demining operations around Oleshky had been completed and that the operation to deliver aid and allow a number of residents to leave was ready to begin. Lantratova added that two people were killed in the demining effort in the city.

The White House said US First Lady Melania Trump mediated the ceasefire in Oleshky, which she described as “on the brink of disaster,” with food and medical supplies running perilously low for the up to 2,000 people still there. She began talks after learning about the humanitarian situation in the city at an event during the United Nations General Assembly session in September, the White House said.

Oleshky, once home to about 24,000 people, has no electricity, heat or running water as it approaches another harsh winter. The Vatican has offered its own narrative, suggesting that the pope was responsible for helping the pause in fighting through phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Moscow and Kyiv have observed the truce in and around the devastated city since Tuesday but remain otherwise locked in the war that began more than four years ago. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Russian state TV that the situation in Oleshky is an isolated case that should not be extrapolated to the broader peaceful settlement process in Ukraine.

Russian officials said they struck an industrial facility near Kremenchuk while also hitting the Ukrainian capital and Kharkiv, the second‑biggest city, according to Ukrainian officials on the Telegram messaging app. Moscow said it hit energy infrastructure in and around Kyiv, as well as in the Dnipropetrovsk region, port facilities in the Odesa region and cargo vessels it said were used by the military. The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, said on Telegram that Russian authorities downed most of the more than 850 drones headed overnight towards the city.