Ukraine optimistic about possible additional localized ceasefires after Oleshky with Melania Trump’s help

The Ukrainian government is “optimistic” that U.S. first lady Melania Trump may be able to broker additional localized ceasefires to provide humanitarian aid to the most desperate communities suffering from the war.The short ceasefire allowed the evacuation of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians who had lived under Russian occupation for more than four years in southeastern Ukraine. The civilians who remained in Oleshky prior to the evacuations last week were forced to live under constant threat from the front lines on top of a hunger crisis.“We are very optimistic that we could replicate the success of” the Oleshky operation, David Arakhamia, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s parliamentary faction, said during a press conference at the Ukrainian Embassy in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., on Friday. “It’s not because they want to support Ukrainian initiatives obviously, I think they want to support the first lady’s initiatives. I think that’s what we are thinking in Kremlin, there is a general will to support Melania Trump’s efforts and that helps a lot on global levels,” he continued.Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament commissioner for human rights, led their delegation during the evacuation, and his time in Oleshky marked the first time a Ukrainian official stepped foot in Russian-occupied territory since the full-scale invasion began.It marked the first ceasefire since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, nearly five years ago.“The idea is if we cannot stop 100% of the war,” Arakhamia added, “maybe up to 5% we could do it 10%, and up to 10% maybe we could do 20%, 25%. Maybe this is worth the effort by itself. So that’s the logic behind it, maybe it’s too naive honestly. But we should try any opportunity.”Lubinets, who also spoke at the press conference, recounted how a woman had contacted him about her mother who was very sick and stuck in Oleshky. The woman was among the hundreds who left Oleshky during the pause in fighting, and she has since been reunited with her family in a hospital in Kyiv, where she’s seeing her daughter for the first time since the invasion began in 2022.“For Ukraine, it wasn’t PR. It was the concrete mechanism of saving our people. If even I knew that one person should be evacuated from Oleshky, I can assure you we did absolutely the same. Even for one, we did it for many people,” Lubinets added.Melania Trump brokered the deal and she hosted representatives from the Russian and Ukrainian governments at the White House on Thursday to honor the officials involved in making the ceasefire a reality.The sight of Yana Lantratova and Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev at the White House and next to Ukrainian officials was a stark picture considering they are on opposite sides of a war of choice, which Russian President Vladimir Putin can end at any time and has instead chosen to maintain.Lantratova has been accused by the Ukrainian government of directly facilitating the kidnapping of two Ukrainian children who were given to Russian families. Russia has been accused of kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children to bring them to Russian-occupied Ukraine or Russian territory without giving them a choice, where these families often try to erase their Ukrainian identity.“For me now it’s normal because we have a very productive channel for negotiations with [the] Russian side for human dimension and exactly I negotiate with Yana Lantratova and it’s natural two ombudsmans of two countries we communicate, we negotiate with different humanitarian issues and more important for us is results, results for our people, for our country,” Lubinets said.DEMOCRATS SALIVATE OVER PENTAGON OVERSIGHT WITH NEW MAJORITIESDespite Ukraine’s hopefulness that the first lady is able to broker similar deals in the future, close observers acknowledge that Russia did not agree to the deal out of concern for the people who were living under siege.“I think that the better word is a humanitarian evacuation,” Kurt Volker, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, told the Washington Examiner. “You have Russia laying siege to a city, driving people from their homes, but it wasn’t even safe to get out. So they created a temporary pause in fighting to give people time and opportunity to get out, so that Russia can consolidate its seizure of another Ukrainian city. So this has nothing to do with peace and nothing to do with a real ceasefire. It’s just a humanitarian evacuation to help people, which is a good thing. But don’t construe that as being a step on the road to more peace, a more permanent peace.”The American first lady has also brokered multiple small deals to reunite kidnapped Ukrainian children with their families.