Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha stated that Russian occupying forces are turning the Ukrainian town of Oleshky into a death trap gripped by starvation, while urging international organizations to help evacuate its residents. The Kremlin previously acknowledged in September that Oleshky faced critical problems concerning food and medical supplies.
Sybiha issued his remarks on social media shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged, during a conversation with Pope Leo, to cooperate in delivering vital supplies into the settlement located in the southern Kherson region. Officials reported that the local hospital has run out of medicine and that numerous bodies remain unburied in streets and homes because Russian forces forbid residents from holding burials.
Families in the area are reportedly starving, surviving on leftover garden vegetables, preserves, and snails. Ukraine has repeatedly called for safe evacuation routes and international humanitarian access, stressing that these appeals cannot remain unanswered. In response to the crisis, the Ukrainian military has twice utilized drones to deliver food and medicine to the beleaguered town.
Sybiha urged the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other organizations to secure safe evacuation corridors and immediate humanitarian access. Oleshky sits on the east side of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region, which Russian forces mostly occupied following the 2022 invasion, prior to a Ukrainian counteroffensive that recaptured nearby areas including the city of Kherson.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy characterized the situation in Oleshky as genocide. According to Danielle Bell, head of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Oleshky had a pre-war population of 24,000 and currently houses approximately 1,700 residents, including 47 children.
Meanwhile, local prosecutors reported that Russian forces dropped aerial bombs on the city of Kherson, situated on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from Oleshky, resulting in the death of an ambulance driver and leaving 40 people wounded.