Oleshky Evacuation: What We Know About the First Joint Relief Convoy

Civilians began leaving the besieged, Russian-held city of Oleshky in southern Ukraine on Friday in a joint relief operation, the Guardian reported. It is the first operation of its kind in four years and eight months of war. A humanitarian convoy of 25 buses and ambulances brought food and medicine and took out residents who wanted to leave for Russia or Ukraine.

What happened in Oleshky on Friday?

A Ukrainian delegation reached the city late in the morning to prepare the evacuation, according to the Guardian. Footage on social media showed tearful residents embracing delegation members as they waited in heavy rain for the main convoy.

Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party who was part of the delegation, confirmed that some people were already traveling toward the southern Russian city of Anapa. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's presidential office, wrote online that the humanitarian operation was under way. He is not part of the delegation in the city.

Earlier reports suggested more than 500 people wanted to move to Ukrainian territory, but it was unclear how many actually traveled in the convoy.

Why was the situation in the city so serious?

Oleshky sits on the Russian-occupied side of the Dnipro River, opposite Kherson. Months of severe food and medical shortages led to warnings of starvation for the few thousand people still there, including about 50 children. Authorities and volunteers say the population has fallen to about 2,000 since the war began.

Residents described risking their lives on mine-strewn roads to find food and water. Some said they survived on a cup of rice or buckwheat a day, sometimes with a vegetable or wild plants added. Russian troops seized the city in the first days of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. It was also badly flooded after the Kakhovka dam was destroyed in June 2023.

How are evacuees getting to Ukraine?

Ukrainian-held territory lies just 3 miles (5km) from Oleshky, but evacuees cannot cross directly. According to the Guardian, they must travel to Anapa, then to Belarus, and then cross the border into Ukraine's Chernihiv region. Arakhamia said they would fly from Anapa to Belarus and then take buses home.

A localized ceasefire in the Kherson region allowed the roads out of the city to be cleared of mines, which made the evacuation possible.

Who arranged the ceasefire, and what does Moscow say?

The convoy arrived under a ceasefire that U.S. first lady Melania Trump claimed to have helped broker, the Guardian reported. It described the arrangement as a rare example of cooperation between the warring sides.

The Kremlin said Friday that this was a special case and "difficult to extrapolate" to the wider search for a peace settlement. Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, who was on the ground coordinating with his Russian counterpart, Yana Lantratova, said it was the first time since 2022 that a ceasefire had been set up across such a long stretch of the front line and held for so long.

What does this mean for the people of Oleshky?

For those who wanted to leave, the operation offers a way out of a city where food, water and medical care were scarce. One woman on video said she was on bus 20 and her son on bus 17, both headed to Ukraine. An older woman preparing to leave told Ukrainian TV she and others simply wanted to be with their children.

Several hundred people, mainly older residents, have chosen to stay. One woman told Lubinets that many people were remaining, and he replied that he had been told it was their own choice. He said officials would do what they could to make sure humanitarian aid still reaches them.

Ksenia Arkhipova, a volunteer who previously lived in Oleshky and remains in contact with people there, told the Associated Press that large numbers of Russian military personnel are in the city. She said they are checking empty houses, sometimes moving into them, and pressuring residents to evacuate to Russia rather than Ukraine. The Guardian did not report a Russian response to those claims.

Around Prague, based on reporting by The Guardian