Friday 30 October 2026
Aid reaches Oleshky and residents may leave to either side, in the third day of a ceasefire that is still holding
The humanitarian convoy reached the Russian held town of Oleshky in southern Ukraine on Friday, and residents were offered food, medical supplies and a choice to leave toward Ukraine or toward Russia. Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets and Russian commissioner Yana Lantratova appeared side by side in the town. Lantratova said a sapper and one other person were killed during the demining that cleared the convoy's routes. Twenty five buses with at least 750 seats stood ready, including provision for the bedridden and a bus fitted with pet cages. The local ceasefire brokered by First Lady Melania Trump took effect on October 27 and runs to November 1.
The convoy got in. After demining work finished on Thursday, trucks carrying food, hygiene products, medical supplies and fuel moved overnight toward Oleshky, the town on the Dnipro River opposite Kherson that Russian forces seized in the first days of the full scale invasion in February 2022. Reporters from France, Italy, Russia, Ukraine and the United States travelled with it.
In the town, the two human rights commissioners stood together. Yana Lantratova of Russia said the aid was assembled from the specific needs reported to them. Dmytro Lubinets of Ukraine said everyone who needs assistance will get it, including those who wish to leave. We have reached an agreement to assist citizens who wish to travel to Ukraine, he said, and assistance will likewise be available to those who wish to travel to the Russian Federation.
The offer to leave is real transport, not a formality. Lantratova said 25 buses with at least 750 seats stood ready, with special provision for people who are bedridden and 50 medical personnel present, and one bus fitted with pet cages for residents who would not leave their animals behind. About 2,000 residents are estimated to remain in Oleshky, a town badly damaged in the fighting and flooded after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in 2023. Residents have described travelling mine strewn roads at mortal risk to get food and water, and surviving on a cup of rice or buckwheat a day.
The road in cost two lives before the convoy moved. Lantratova said a sapper and one other person were killed during the demining operations this week. Lubinets said the ceasefire, in force since early Tuesday, is the first since 2022 to be established across such an extensive stretch of the front line and maintained for this long. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke of a high degree of coordination between the two commissioners.
Nothing about the wider war paused for it. On Thursday a Russian drone killed at least 14 people on a crowded rail platform in Dnipro, and Moscow said on Friday that it had struck energy infrastructure in and around Kyiv and the Dnipro region, port facilities in the Odesa region and cargo vessels it said were used by the military. The six day Oleshky truce, brokered by First Lady Melania Trump with the involvement of Pope Leo, runs to 10:59 p.m. on November 1. American mediated peace talks are due to resume in Abu Dhabi next month. Russia still wants full control of the Donbas and a bar on Ukraine joining NATO. Kyiv wants American intelligence sharing and Western weapons deliveries to continue. The convoy proved the two sides can run one operation together. It settled nothing else.
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