The telephone message sent from Russian-occupied Oleshky was grim: Food had finally run out for the approximately 2,000 civilians, including 50 children, who remained in the town and its surrounding villages.
“We are in Oleshky (and) we cannot go out. We are hungry… Right now I have absolutely nothing to eat,” read the message from a woman from the besieged town who was waiting to be evacuated by occupying forces.
Before the war, she weighed 110 kg (17th); now she weighed only 67 kg, she wrote. “At first I was happy (to lose a little weight), but now I realize that I will die without protein-rich food. It’s very hard. The house where we stayed last winter was also destroyed and burned. Just like our own house… We are still alive.”
Olechky, across the Dnipro River from the southern city of Kherson, has become “hell on earth,” according to Ukrainians familiar with conditions there.
This weekend, military authorities in Kherson carried out a large-scale airdrop of food, water and emergency medical supplies in the city and surrounding areas, using large drones, after Russia reportedly again rejected a ceasefire aimed at evacuating civilians.
The Kherson military governor’s office said one operation dropped about four tons of food to 100 sites, but it is unclear how much the Russian military intercepted.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha addressed the situation in Olechky at the UN General Assembly in New York this week. A “Save Oleshky” banner was held up Friday during a Ukraine-Hungary Nations League soccer match.
In a statement released Monday, Sybiha warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” and called for an immediate evacuation, accusing Russia of being “the only obstacle.”
He said in a speech at the general assembly: “Russia is deliberately making life impossible there. It is making them starve.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this month acknowledged the “critical situation” in Oleshky but accused Ukrainian forces of blocking humanitarian supplies to its residents.
Until May, food was still reaching the residents of a town that once had 24,000 inhabitants. But since May, as Russian occupying forces have expanded their minefields and drone coverage, the flow of supplies has stopped completely.
The problem for civilians is compounded by the fact that Ukraine’s highly successful summer drone campaign against Russian supply lines has caused shortages for the front-line troops of the invading forces, who in turn are stealing what little food Ukrainian civilians have managed to save.
In messages shared with the Guardian, residents said they were limiting themselves to one meal a day: a potato-free soup, made from zucchini grown in what were once the flower boxes of the city’s apartment buildings, sometimes with the addition of fodder purslane, an edible weed.
“We lack everything,” one resident said earlier this summer. “By August the situation will be critical for us. And in the fall we will definitely die. I am already dying. I am getting weaker day by day.”
On September 1, a food convoy heading toward the city was attacked. Moscow blamed the attack on Ukrainian armed forces, while kyiv placed responsibility for the attack on Russian troops.
Ukrainian officials say attempts to drop food by drones have done little to help: Supplies were seized by Russian soldiers, and in at least one case the intended recipient was arrested.
Commenting on the weekend airdrop, Kherson military governor Oleksandr Prokudin described it as the largest operation of its kind to date.
“The food was delivered directly to 100 distribution points. And now I would like to address the Russians,” he said. “Civilians have absolutely nothing to do with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Because of the conditions you have created in Oleshky, people simply have no choice but to take food. Do not deprive people of the chance to survive and avoid starvation.
“Russia, as the occupying power, is obliged to provide the population with food, medicine and adequate conditions of health care and hygiene. If its own resources are insufficient, the occupying authorities must consent to the humanitarian operations of international organizations and other states. On the contrary, we see the opposite.”
He continued: “Russian occupying forces are obstructing the delivery of aid to the civilian population. They are destroying vehicles trying to deliver humanitarian supplies. And they are killing people trying to deliver food and medicine. They are also blocking all initiatives and agreements regarding the evacuation of people from Oleshky.”
According to Tetiana Hasanenko, a Ukrainian official stationed at the head of Oleshky’s military administration from the west bank of the Dnipro, the problems began in earnest late last year, with access to the city from the Russian side for Ukrainian civilians becoming increasingly difficult.
“The density of minefields has become very high,” she told the Guardian. “From December onwards, food deliveries became much less frequent because vehicles were hitting mines and being targeted by drones. By winter, food supply had already become very difficult.
“And it’s already very hard. There is no other infrastructure, no electricity, so no ATMs, no cash. Oleshky doesn’t work. Before the war, people grew food in their vegetable gardens. Not only did they have enough for themselves, but they sold it to Crimea and the city of Kherson. Now they can’t even grow it for themselves.”
Hasanenko described a reported incident in which a 74-year-old man was digging a cave that had been flooded with mud after Russia blew up the Kakhovka Dam in 2023, looking for stored food. Refusing to let the soldiers enter the cellar he was searching, he was murdered by the soldiers.
“Some people dug through these cellars looking for canned vegetables, pickled vegetables and canned meat that people were storing for the winter,” she said.
Despite the appalling conditions in the city, Ukrainian officials say occupying forces are dragging their feet in evacuating remaining civilians in order to deter a Ukrainian counterattack.
Hasanenko said: “The Russians are afraid that an offensive (against Oleshky) will start from the city of Kherson and they are just keeping people, civilians, as human shields. »
She added: “It’s an old city. It’s been around for almost a thousand years – and in all that time, people have never lived in such horrible conditions, in a hell like today. There are corpses not only in the basement of the hospital, but all over the city. They’re just lying there because you can’t pick up the corpses. The drones are constantly flying and then the dogs eat the bodies.”
In a text message, another resident simply said: “All supplies are gone. »
Another message: “A week ago, orcs (a Ukrainian term to describe Russian soldiers) entered people’s yards and dug up all the potatoes, onions and garlic.
“They took all of the elderly women’s food supplies. When one of the grandmothers started screaming, they responded that people like them who ‘will soon live in paradise’ should subsist on nothing but water.”
Gn world
