‘Waiting for Death’: Russian-Occupied Oleshky Faces Starvation as Russia Blocks Aid and Evacuation

By Friday, Sept. 18, Russian-occupied Oleshky had gone almost four months without a confirmed delivery of food or medicine, leaving thousands of civilians to survive on garden produce, preserves and barter while minefields and drone attacks made evacuation nearly impossible. According to Oleshky Military Administration head Tetiana Hasanenko, the last successful supply and evacuation mission reached the city on May 26. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission independently confirmed that no food had reached Oleshky between that date and June 24, while Hasanenko told Suspilne on Sept. 11 that deliveries had still not resumed.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Kyiv Post reported in July that Oleshky had already been cut off from food and medicine deliveries for more than a month. Reports from residents, volunteers, Ukrainian officials and international monitors indicate critical shortages of food, drinking water, medicine, electricity and gas. However, Russia’s information blockade and the danger of contacting people inside the city make the precise number of residents and deaths impossible to establish independently. Estimates for Oleshky itself range from around 2,000 to 4,000 people. Hasanenko said her administration previously counted about 2,000 residents, including 45 to 47 children, but recent evacuees told her that between 3,000 and 4,000 could remain. The higher figure of more than 6,000 people, including about 200 children, cited by Lubinets, covers Oleshky and surrounding settlements on the occupied left bank of the Dnipro. Other Topics of Interest Trump Administration Weighs Russia Business Deals Before Ukraine War Ends – NYT The administration is weighing whether to conclude separate economic agreements with Moscow even without a broader settlement of the war, according to two people familiar with the talks. Four kilometers from food Oleshky lies only a few kilometers across the Dnipro from Ukrainian-controlled Kherson. In practice, the river, destroyed bridges, frontline fighting, minefields and drone surveillance have made that short distance impassable. “Only four kilometers from us, there is life with food, but there is physically no way to leave the city,” resident Alla Lykhman-Malysh said on Facebook. Lykhman-Malysh said that during the summer residents survived largely on cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and eggplants grown in gardens. As autumn approaches, that source of food is disappearing. By early August, the local market reportedly offered little beyond vegetables, herbs, watermelons and margarine left in storage at a former dairy plant. Flour, cereals, potatoes, tea and coffee were available mainly through barter rather than for money. A kilogram of sugar and a packet of the common painkiller Citramon each cost about 1,000 rubles, she said. The reported prices and shortages were also detailed in local accounts. Hasanenko told Suspilne that money had effectively lost its value because there was almost nothing left to buy. “No matter how much money you have, nobody is selling anything,” she said. Residents interviewed by the German newspaper Bild said Russian soldiers had turned vehicles carrying food away at checkpoints. One resident claimed soldiers told people attempting to leave: “Go back and die there.” Kyiv Post could not independently verify the reported exchange. A diary of disappearing food A first-person diary from inside Oleshky, published by The Ukrainians in April, documented how the city’s food supply gradually collapsed during the winter. The diary’s author wrote that deliveries stopped after heavy snow on Jan. 10. A small shipment arrived eight days later, but bread was taken as it was unloaded and the supplies quickly ran out. The city’s remaining stores subsequently closed. By late January, residents were selling their own preserves and the last packages of pasta, tea and condiments. One pharmacy was clearing its remaining stock because neither medicine nor fuel was arriving. The diarist described finding dried carrots and cereal bought years earlier, rationing flour and baking bread in a frying pan. Gas cylinders could no longer be refilled, forcing residents to cook on wood-burning stoves or small camping burners. A limited Russian-controlled aid distribution was held in February, the diary said, but supplies were reportedly available only to pensioners holding Russian documents, with an exception for people over 80 who still had Ukrainian pension certificates. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty separately collected accounts from residents and volunteers who said people hunted pheasants and caught pigeons during the winter. Volunteer Ksenia Arkhipova said relatives frequently contacted her with messages such as: “Dad is at this address. There is no food.” More recent testimony published in a Kyiv Post opinion article described the same pattern. One woman, identified by the pseudonym Oksana for security reasons, said her parents exchanged vegetables for eggs and dried their remaining bread for winter. Another resident, Alya, said she had survived at times by drinking water with honey. Aid missions end in mines and drone attacks Regular deliveries reportedly became unreliable in December 2025. By the end of February, only one shipment had reached Oleshky since mid-January, according to the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. The UN said the last grocery store ended regular operations in January. Residents then depended on preserved food and sporadic deliveries by private suppliers, which were often inaccessible to elderly or disabled people. A convoy carrying food and humanitarian aid struck a mine at the city’s entrance on June 2. The UN recorded one person killed and three injured. Hasanenko later told Suspilne that two people were killed and two severely wounded. The discrepancy could not be independently resolved. Accounts of another attempted delivery on Sept. 1 also differ. Hasanenko told Suspilne that vehicles encountered mines and tripwires and were forced to turn around. Lykhman-Malysh and Arkhipova separately reported that vehicles were attacked by drones despite carrying signs identifying them as civilian, according to Vgoru reporting. Kyiv Post could not determine whether the accounts referred to the same vehicles or separate attempts. Lykhman-Malysh said desperate residents later walked approximately seven kilometers along the mined route to collect whatever remained around damaged vehicles, including scorched potatoes, onions and rain-soaked flatbread. UN monitors stressed that responsibility for individual drone attacks in the frontline area cannot always be conclusively established. Oleshky and neighboring settlements are under Russian control but are also within range of Ukrainian short-range drones. The UN nevertheless confirmed that drones and landmines have effectively prevented food deliveries, medical transfers and organized evacuation. “People can’t get out, food can’t get in, and sick and injured are not getting the medical assistance they need,” said Danielle Bell, head of the UN monitoring mission. Residents cross minefields to escape Lubinets said Ukraine and Russia had previously developed procedures for a humanitarian evacuation. A list of evacuees was compiled, Ukrainian forces prepared to observe a local ceasefire, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was prepared to participate within its mandate. Russia has since failed to reconfirm its readiness to proceed with the mission, Lubinets said on Sept. 16. Kyiv Post reported on Sept. 16 that Russian authorities had failed to uphold the previously agreed arrangements for the humanitarian mission. His office has received 176 appeals concerning the humanitarian situation in occupied Kherson Oblast and verified information about 358 people who urgently need assistance leaving. “The most terrible thing is that people are already walking through mined fields because they see no other way out,” Lubinets wrote. Speaking separately on Ukrainian television, the ombudsman said many residents had reportedly died after stepping on mines during independent escape attempts. No verified casualty count was provided. He also discussed the blocked evacuation in an Espreso interview. Some evacuees have described walking ahead of vehicles to locate mines and guide drivers along damaged roads. Others traveled through occupied southern Ukraine, Russia and Belarus before returning to Ukrainian-controlled territory through Europe. A woman interviewed by Novynarnia said she escaped with her husband and 84-year-old mother after surviving largely on potatoes and pasta recovered from abandoned cellars. The journey took four days. The UN said volunteers had helped approximately 180 people leave Oleshky and neighboring communities through improvised arrangements by late June. The largest operation evacuated 32 people during a three-day easing of hostilities in May. Such private missions are far too small for the remaining population and are particularly difficult for older people, people with disabilities and bedridden residents. The hospital has no medicine or evacuation route Oleshky’s remaining clinic reportedly operates without reliable electricity, diagnostic equipment, antibiotics, painkillers or basic supplies for treating wounds, according to the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Ambulances have stopped visiting homes, while critically ill or injured patients cannot be transferred to hospitals elsewhere in occupied territory. The UN documented one patient dying while waiting to be transferred to Skadovsk. Residents and local officials have also reported deaths from strokes, heart attacks, sepsis, hypothermia and possible starvation, although no independently verified breakdown exists. Bodies can remain uncollected because going outside risks mine explosions and drone attacks. The city’s morgue has been destroyed and there is no refrigeration, according to Hasanenko, whose account was also documented by KHPG. The EU’s External Action Service published an estimate, attributed to local officials and volunteers, that more than 300 residents had died from cold or hunger by spring. No underlying list or independent verification was provided, and Kyiv Post could not confirm the figure. The UN has recorded reports of at least 29 civilians killed and 54 injured in Oleshky and Hola Prystan during 2026, many of them in drone attacks. It said many of those cases had been verified but that responsibility could not be conclusively established in every incident. Russia acknowledges crisis but blames Ukraine Russian-installed Kherson regional chief Volodymyr Saldo denied in May that a humanitarian crisis existed and claimed Russia was supplying Oleshky with essential goods. He also rejected a proposed ceasefire for an evacuation, citing alleged fears of a Ukrainian “provocation.” On June 20, Russian Foreign Ministry representative Rodion Miroshnik acknowledged a humanitarian crisis in Oleshky but blamed Ukraine and Western countries. Moscow and its occupation administration have not presented independently verifiable evidence of regular food or medicine deliveries since May. Ukraine’s National Resistance Center said Russian occupation authorities were using the crisis for propaganda by blaming Ukrainian forces for the blockade and attempting to shift responsibility for conditions in territory controlled by Russia. Under international humanitarian law, an occupying power must ensure food and medical supplies for the population and facilitate humanitarian relief when local resources are inadequate, the UN monitoring mission noted. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of deliberately keeping civilians in Oleshky as human shields. The allegation has been raised publicly by Ukrainian lawmakers. That specific motive cannot be independently verified, but Russia’s refusal to confirm the negotiated evacuation has also prevented the planned transfer of residents to other Russian-held areas such as Skadovsk or Crimea. Oleshky has been occupied since the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The city was devastated again in June 2023 when the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam caused catastrophic flooding across the Kherson region, destroying homes, documents and infrastructure. The city, which had a prewar population of more than 24,000, is now largely ruined, cut off from utilities and surrounded by an expanding frontline minefield. “People are no longer living,” Hasanenko said. “They are waiting for death.”