Ukraine to Charge Russia in UN for Causing Humanitarian Disaster in Occupied City

The United Nations must intervene with the Kremlin so that an ongoing humanitarian disaster with thousands of Ukrainians living in a frontline city without food, water, public services or a means to escape might survive Russian occupation, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said on Monday.Ukraine’s top diplomat, in comments widely re-published in national media, accused Russia of “deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the temporarily occupied left-bank Kherson region. It is blocking the delivery of food and medicine, hindering the work of humanitarian missions and the evacuation of civilians. People are effectively deprived of choice, and with it, the chance for salvation. The situation in [the city] Oleshky is particularly critical.”JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.A town on the left/south bank of the Dnipro River opposite the major city Kherson, Oleshky was occupied by Russian forces in February 2022 and devastated by flooding in June 2023, following Russian demolition of a giant, Soviet-era hydroelectric dam farther upstream.Russian occupation authorities in the following years effectively wrote off the city and ended attempts to deliver food, gas, electricity, medicine and clean water to the more than 2,000 people, along with 50+ children still thought to be living there. In late August, Russian army roadblocks shut down all civilian movement into and out of Oleshky and declared the city and territory around it no-man’s-land subject to air and drone strikes. International humanitarian assistance agencies, likewise, are not allowed near the city, Sybiha said. Other Topics of Interest Putin Plans to Visit APEC Summit, May Skip Trump’s G20 The Russian leader reportedly plans his first in-person APEC appearance since 2017, but will likely skip US-hosted G20. “People are trying to survive under the conditions of the blockade created by Russia: they are looking for leftover food, collecting grass, because there is simply no other food. A separate dimension of Russian terror is the hunt for civilians. Russian FPV [first-person-view) drones are chasing and attacking people, turning even an attempt to leave the house or move around the city into a mortal risk,” he said.Ukraine’s UN delegation has “specific instructions” to make the case that Russia is responsible for a humanitarian disaster in Oleshky and to ask the UN General Assembly to take steps to end it, he said.A possible response would be to force Russia to allow Red Cross workers and emergency supplies to reach people in Oleshky, Sybiha said. Ukraine’s Orthodox Christian church leadership on Monday published an appeal to the Pope for intervention to help people in Oleshky.Dmitry Peskov, personal spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a rare Kremlin acknowledgement of civilian distress linked to its invasion of Ukraine, in Tuesday comments to Moscow reporters, said that the situation with food and medicine supplies is critical and that Russian military personnel are working to resolve it. He blamed the difficulty of deliveries to Oleshky residents on Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks.Serhiy Kozar, a Ukrainian parliament member from Kherson region, in Monday evening comments to the national Suspilne Novyny television news platform said “based on the information I have…we maintain communications with people there…there is no government of any kind in the city right now, there is no presence of [Russian] occupation authorities or troops. People are in a, one can say, half-starved state. Our people (Ukrainian civilians) can’t go anywhere because all routes are mined…the situation is extremely critical.” Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, one of Ukraine’s top hard news weeklies, in a Monday report, estimated more than 500 residents died during the 2023 flooding and reported the humanitarian situation was critical in Oleshky and the neighboring villages of Holya Prystan, Starya Zbur’ivka, and Novaya Zbur’ivka.Across the region, Russian forces are blocking people from leaving and obstructing the delivery of essential goods and medicines, and in total, more than 6,000 people are without adequate access to water, food, medical care, and safety, including approximately 200 children, said Ukraine’s national Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, in May comments to Kyiv media. The International Committee of the Red Cross is prepared to facilitate the safe evacuation of Ukrainian civilians, but Russian forces are preventing it, he said.Stanislav Bunyatov, a former Ukrainian politician currently working as a volunteer assisting civilians, in Sunday blog comments to 280,000+ followers said that Russian army recruiters were taking advantage of poor conditions in the region seeking unemployed military-age men in the area and offering them contracts to serve in Russian Federation forces against their own country, Ukraine. Kyiv Post could not confirm that claim independently. As of July, all land communications to the territory had been severed for more than a month thanks to Russian roadblocks, minefields and persistent drone overflights attacking even pedestrians. Aside from sustenance farming, there is effectively no economic activity in cut-off territories around Oleshky.Although ground combat operations along the lower reaches of the Dnipro River came to an end in July 2024 with Ukrainian abandonment of attempts to secure a foothold on the left/south bank of the river near Oleshky, the region has remained the scene of intense air activity, both by conventional manned airplanes and unmanned drones. Commandos from both sides raid back and forth across the river and marshlands around it year-round.Ukraine’s Air Force, per its statements and published video, from time to time, conducts air strikes against structures in Oleshky thought to contain Russian troops, most recently in late August. Geo-located drone footage from a mid-September overflight showed rows of Soviet-era apartment blocks badly damaged by fire and in some cases entire building sections demolished by explosion.Russian forces since mid-2025 had shelled and bombarded Ukrainian military positions and civilian structures almost daily. In recent months, Russian drone presence over inhabited locations on the Ukrainian side of the river has intensified, particularly over the city of Kherson, where Russian FPV drones have repeatedly attacked civilian pedestrians.Per UN statute, Ukraine has the right to place on the agenda its claims against Russia after which the General Assembly might debate their merit and possible responses. A non-binding condemnation of Russia would be possible with a simple majority, as would a UN declaration that warring parties should allow international agencies like the Red Cross to reach Oleshky. Deployment of major UN resources and especially UN peacekeepers would, in contrast, require unanimous approval of the Security Council, of which Russia is a permanent member.