Ukraine, Russia say US-brokered truce holding in ravaged city of Oleshky

KYIV - A local truce between Ukraine and Russia aimed at allowing humanitarian aid into the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky appeared to be holding on Oct 27, with neither side reporting any violations after several hours.Both sides said they began observing the truce at 3am local time (9am in Singapore).The war-ravaged city in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region had been caught in the middle of fighting between the two sides since 2022, when it was seized by Russian forces at the start of their invasion.Former residents told AFP in September that those remaining in the city were starving, lacked medicine and could not easily leave.“The possibility of evacuation from Oleshky is very good news for me and for the people who are trapped there,” Olga, a former resident whose last name AFP is withholding for security reasons, told AFP on Oct 27.“My acquaintances are ready to leave,” she said.Announcing the truce on Oct 23, US First Lady Melania Trump said civilian officials from both Russia and Ukraine would visit residents in their homes and “determine the level of assistance they require”.“Residents who wish to evacuate will receive coordinated support and transportation to their preferred destination. I anticipate some will want to go to Russia, and some to Ukraine,” she said.AFP was not able to immediately verify details about the humanitarian mission or whether there had been a decrease in fighting.The Russian military does not routinely grant international media, including AFP, access to areas under Russian occupation.Right-leaning US cable network Newsmax said it had been granted “exclusive television access” to accompany observers entering the city on Oct 29.‘Biggest de-escalation since 2022’David Arakhamia, a Ukrainian lawmaker who took part in peace negotiations with Russia in 2022, described the ceasefire as the “biggest de-escalation since 2022”.Both sides were adhering to the truce as of 5.30pm (10.30pm in Singapore), Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said in a post on Facebook, adding that it was scheduled to remain in effect until 10.59pm on Nov 1.Russia also reported the truce was holding.A staffer for Lubinets said the truce applied to the entire Kherson region.Oleshky, on the southern bank of the Dnipro River, was seized by Russian troops in 2022.The population has since dropped from about 24,000 to around 2,000 today, including as many as 50 children, according to Ukrainian and US estimates.Former residents told AFP in September that some of those remaining in the city were hunting pigeons to survive and had “forgotten what bread is”.The Ukrainian military has released drone footage of the town showing rows of empty apartment blocks, some charred by fire or partially destroyed by fighting.Vladimir Saldo, a Moscow-installed official in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, told Russian media that those wishing to evacuate could go to Russian-occupied Crimea or Rostov in southwestern Russia, but would need to wait until the heavily-mined road from the city had been cleared.Air barrages elsewhere in UkraineOutside the Kherson region, Russia continued to pummel the rest of Ukraine with air strikes, officials said.Ballistic missiles struck a university campus in Kyiv on the evening of Oct 26.Another overnight strike hit the capital’s Southern Bridge – a major road-and-rail artery crossing the Dnipro river.Images posted on social media showed a gaping hole in between subway tracks and a mess of twisted metal.In Russia, two people were killed “as a result of explosive devices being dropped” on the western city of Bryansk, the regional governor said.Ukrainian attacks on the Russian-occupied Luhansk region killed four people, the region’s Russian-installed governor Leonid Pasechnik said.Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a conflict that has spiralled into Europe’s deadliest since World War II.Russia, which denies targeting civilians, now occupies around a fifth of its neighbour: the Crimean peninsula, which it invaded and later claimed to have annexed in 2014, most of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk – collectively referred to as the Donbas – and large parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine are set to resume in November, having been effectively frozen since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in February.Finland’s president and Norway’s prime minister held a surprise call with Putin on Oct 27 aimed at ending the war, which they described as “frank and substantive”. AFP