World

Kherson Region Ends Six‑Day Ceasefire as Truce Expiry Brings Return of Hostilities

By AFP , AP and Reuters

The six‑day ceasefire that had limited hostilities to Ukraine’s eastern Kherson region ended Sunday night with no reported violations from either side, but no extension was agreed upon. The truce, the longest multi‑day pause between Russia and Ukraine, allowed hundreds of residents of the Russian‑occupied town of Oleshky to be evacuated in a joint operation between Kyiv and Moscow. Russian strikes elsewhere in Ukraine on Sunday left hundreds of thousands of households without power, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. In Russia, authorities reported major damage to an industrial site after Ukrainian drone attacks on the Nizhny Novgorod region.

The ceasefire was reached after mediation by United States First Lady Melania Trump and Pope Leo XIV and was set to expire at 10:59 pm Ukraine time (20:59 GMT). On Sunday, Ukraine’s military evacuated 167 people from threatened areas of the southern Kherson region, including 22 children and 21 people with limited mobility. The Ukrainian General Staff said the evacuation was carried out by civil‑military cooperation units of the ‘South’ group of forces in partnership with local authorities.

An estimated 2,000 civilians were in Oleshky when the truce began. They were offered the choice to evacuate to Kyiv‑controlled territory, to remain in the city with replenished food and medical supplies, or to move to Russian‑occupied territory. “The ceasefire across Oleshky and the surrounding Kherson region has provided residents with the freedom to move, access to food, clean water, medicine, plus a renewed sense of dignity without the constant threat of attack,” Melania Trump said on social media.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, quoted by Russian news agencies, said Moscow had a positive view of how the operation was conducted in Oleshky and of the coordination between the two countries’ human rights commissioners. A Ukrainian official told AFP that Russia reportedly refused an offer to extend the ceasefire after Kyiv’s Foreign Ministry proposed it.

Since Russia launched a full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow’s forces have occupied most of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as the majority of territory in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin urged residents to remain vigilant as the ceasefire expired, warning against visiting the so‑called ‘red zones’ near the Dnipro River where Russian strikes remain intense.

Residents in Kherson city, one of the remaining areas of the region still controlled by Ukraine, remained calm despite the quiet of the localised ceasefire ending. “Don’t be afraid, keep holding on,” Oleksandr Knyha, head of the Mykola Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater, told an audience as he opened a concert. Knyha, from Oleshky, has not given up hope of returning home.

Elsewhere, Moscow and Kyiv have continued air strikes. Zelenskyy said Russia continues to target Ukraine’s energy systems before winter. Attacks on power infrastructure in four Ukrainian regions overnight cut electricity to hundreds of thousands of households. A Russian attack also killed three people, including a 13‑year‑old girl, in the Ukrainian region of Vinnytsia when a drone hit a vocational school, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. Four others were wounded.

Russian drone attacks on Kyiv for a second consecutive day wounded a woman and damaged homes, energy infrastructure and a retail establishment, regional authorities said. Ukraine’s Air Force reported that Moscow’s forces launched 433 drones overnight, of which 371 were destroyed or suppressed. More than 100 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the skies of Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, Governor Gleb Nikitin said, sparking a blaze at the Kstovo oil refinery and images of black smoke.

Zelenskyy said Kyiv also struck a factory for missile components and air‑defence facilities in Russia’s southern Rostov region, adding that Ukraine is defending itself against Russian aggression and working to reduce Russia’s capability to continue it.