- A ceasefire brokered by U.S. first lady Melania Trump took effect Tuesday in Russian-occupied Oleshky, Ukraine.
- The truce runs through November 1 to allow aid deliveries, mine clearing and a civilian evacuation planned for Friday.
- Kyiv estimates up to 6,000 people remain trapped in and around the town, many surviving on scraps of grain and wild plants.
- Russia’s Defense Ministry accuses Ukraine of shelling and mining roads into town, while residents fear Russian reprisals.
- Russia hit Kyiv and 10 other regions with missiles and drones overnight as U.S.-backed peace talks near in Abu Dhabi.
On a strip of land where survival has meant cooking garden weeds and navigating minefields for a handful of rice, a fragile ceasefire took hold at 3 a.m. Tuesday, opening a narrow window for food, medicine and evacuation in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky.
The localized truce, secured by U.S. first lady Melania Trump with Pope Leo XIV also pressing for a pause, is meant to let aid in and residents out. But as Russian ballistic missiles rained down on Kyiv within minutes of the ceasefire taking effect, and with past local truces quickly unraveling, few expect this humanitarian pause to signal broader peace.
How residents survived on weeds and a cup of rice a day
Oleshky’s remaining population of roughly 1,700, by Kyiv’s estimate, has endured conditions that defy modern imagination. Before the war, the city housed 24,000 people. Today there is nowhere to buy food, and residents have gone three years without power, gas or running water. Some told Reuters they have gotten by on a single cup of grain a day, padded out now and then with a vegetable or whatever wild plants they can gather.
Kyiv believes as many as 6,000 people, 200 of them children, are still trapped in and around Oleshky. The roads out are seeded with mines and stalked by drones. One resident who recently fled described walking 24 kilometers (15 miles) through minefields, keeping silent and maintaining precise distance from explosives that could detonate at any misstep.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its engineers neutralized more than 300 explosive devices in the week leading up to the ceasefire, and it accused Kyiv of launching 18 artillery strikes and over 120 drone attacks on the area between October 19 and 26. The ministry also accuses Ukraine of using drones to lay mines on roads into town.
The fragile mechanics of a humanitarian corridor
The ceasefire, set to run through November 1, is meant to allow demining of access roads and a protected route for a humanitarian convoy into Oleshky, with an evacuation planned for Friday. Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said engineers would scout routes and secure safe passage for the aid delivery.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed hope that Ukraine would honor the agreement, suggesting the mechanism could serve as a model for similar arrangements elsewhere in the conflict zone. Ukrainian lawmaker Davyd Arakhamia, who leads President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party in parliament, described it as the “biggest de-escalation since 2022.”
But deep distrust pervades every aspect of the operation. Ksenia Arkhipova, a volunteer who helps residents leave, told the AP that people fear Russian officials will search their phones for signs of Ukrainian ties, something she says Russia has done repeatedly in other occupied areas. Zelenskyy has warned that routes demined by Russia will steer evacuees toward Russia rather than Ukrainian-controlled territory. One former resident who walked out weeks ago cautioned: “You simply cannot trust the Russian Federation.”
Missiles don’t pause while diplomats negotiate
While the world’s attention focused on Oleshky, Russia fired 16 ballistic missiles and more than 280 drones at 11 Ukrainian regions overnight, according to Zelenskyy. In Kyiv, strikes hit a university campus and the city’s key Southern Bridge, killing at least one person and wounding more than a dozen.
Zelenskyy called the strikes “a serious escalation” against Ukrainian logistics. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had targeted transport infrastructure and military sites.
The question hanging over Oleshky is whether this localized ceasefire can survive the broader war raging around it. But the lesson is hard to miss. After more than four years of fighting and staggering sums of Western money and weapons poured into Ukraine, it took quiet diplomacy to get food moving toward starving civilians. If a first lady and a pope can manage that, the negotiators heading to Abu Dhabi for U.S.-backed talks next month have no excuse to settle for anything less than an end to the killing.
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