Evacuees from the devastated, Russian-occupied city of Oleshky crossed from Belarus into the Ukrainian region of Chernihiv on Saturday, leading to emotional family reunions. Families cried as they embraced relatives they had not seen in years, with vulnerable elderly residents carried on stretchers after enduring years without basic utilities.
A Desperate Escape
The evacuees faced a complex journey after Ukrainian military positions lie just 5km (3.1 miles) from Oleshky. They first traveled through Russian-occupied territory to southern Russia, flew to Belarus, and were then driven across Ukraine’s northern border. According to Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, the oldest evacuee was 94 years old while the youngest was one.
Many arrivals bore visible physical and emotional scars, with the evacuation convoy including as many ambulances as coaches. Some residents hobbled on crutches or needed wheelchairs after years caught between frontlines where they resorted to cooking garden weeds to survive.
Conditions in Oleshky had become extremely desperate, lacking food, water, electricity, and gas. Escape routes were heavily mined and subject to drone attacks, while bridges across the nearby River Dnipro were destroyed. One resident told BBC News that he had previously walked through 24km (15 miles) of minefields to find safety.
Ceasefire and Evacuation Process
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked US First Lady Melania Trump for her efforts in brokering a local ceasefire that enabled the evacuation on Friday. A humanitarian ceasefire took effect across the frontline region of Kherson on Tuesday, marking the first peace in the area in four years following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, before which Oleshky had a population of 24,000.
The ceasefire cleared the road out of the city of mines and allowed aid delivery. Residents had a four-hour window to leave before a convoy of 25 buses with a capacity of 750 people departed on Friday afternoon. While hundreds left, several hundred people chose to remain in the war-torn city, with some older residents refusing to leave as told to BBC News by a relative.
Lubinets stated that those who stayed behind will receive necessary humanitarian assistance. Lubinets and his Russian counterpart, Yana Lantratova, traveled to Oleshky together on Friday from Armiansk in the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, making Lubinets the first Ukrainian official to visit Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine since the war began. Russia stated on Thursday that it had prepared dozens of tons of aid for residents choosing to stay.
Zelensky praised Lubinets and his team for their work in relocating evacuees to safety. While Lubinets noted his cooperation with Lantratova was carried out to save lives, some individuals in Ukraine reacted with discomfort at seeing him stand beside a representative of the occupying power.
Zelensky stated in a post on X that all arrivals will receive necessary government assistance to help them adapt. Meanwhile, broader conflict continues, with Zelensky reporting Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and the Ukrainian military reporting a strike on a major Russian missile fuel producer in the Rostov region, ahead of ceasefire talks scheduled in Abu Dhabi in early November.
