Preparations Under Way to Evacuate Civilians From Occupied Oleshky After Ceasefire

Preparations are being made to evacuate civilians from Oleshky, a Russian-occupied town in Ukraine's Kherson region, after a ceasefire took effect there on October 27. Details of the operation remain tightly guarded.

Residents have been isolated since Russia occupied the town in 2022. The destruction of the nearby Kakhovka dam in 2023 and the resulting flooding deepened that isolation. Every access route to Oleshky, which sits on the Dnipro River, has been mined. People who escaped and spoke to Deutsche Welle described hunger, a lack of medicine, and no electricity or water. About 2,000 people are believed to remain in the town.

Myroslava Kharchenko, a lawyer with the Save Ukraine Foundation, told DW that the ceasefire began at 3 a.m. Kyiv time, which was 4 a.m. in Russia. Mine clearance on the road started at about 8 a.m. According to the organization, it has already helped at least 300 civilians leave Oleshky over the past six months. Kharchenko said she had no information yet on whether evacuations had begun, because events inside the town are the responsibility of the military. All those involved have been asked to keep strict confidentiality, since a careless remark could jeopardize the effort.

Information is nonetheless being gathered through closed local chat groups, she said. Registration lists and application forms are circulating, and residents are filling them in themselves. Organizers are contacting people who had earlier asked to be evacuated to confirm details such as date of birth and place of residence. They are also requesting contact information for neighbors or relatives nearby, as communications are highly unreliable. Health details are being collected too, covering people who are ill, have limited mobility, or are recovering from injuries, including blast and mine wounds. Kharchenko said she expects medical assistance to be arranged for those who need it.

The route has not been made public. Kharchenko said a river crossing would be extremely dangerous and that she had heard no confirmation it had been approved. She considers it likely that evacuees would travel through occupied Ukrainian territory and possibly through Russia before reaching Ukraine. For security reasons, she said, none of this is being disclosed.

The evacuation is not expected to happen in a single day, which she welcomed. She hopes those who leave safely in the first stage will encourage others. Residents still in Oleshky are very frightened, she said, after numerous provocations and earlier failed attempts to create a humanitarian corridor. Some may choose not to leave at first, but the foundation estimates that around 500 people could eventually be evacuated.

Kharchenko thanked Melania Trump for drawing attention to the humanitarian situation in Oleshky, which she described as genocide committed by the Russian Federation. She said the foundation hopes those efforts will help make the evacuation possible, and that its gratitude would grow once most people are out of the combat zone and in Ukrainian government-controlled territory.

She could not say when civilians might physically leave. Clearing mines from the roads into the city will take time, and many streets inside Oleshky are also believed to be mined. A hospital in the town needs to be emptied of patients, and a nearby morgue holds bodies that must be recovered. Kharchenko did not know whether these would be covered by the corridor, but said identifying the dead and establishing causes of death is important and will take time. Statements from both the Russian and Ukrainian sides have been extremely cautious, which she said is justified given the circumstances.