Residents write that there is “absolutely nothing” in the city and they have to stretch food to one meal a day. In one message, a woman waiting to be evacuated from Russian forces said she cooks potato-free soup from zucchini, sometimes with the addition of purslane — an edible weed.
She also wrote that before the war she weighed 110 kg, and now — 67 kg, and warned that without proper protein food she would die. According to her, the house where they survived last winter was destroyed and burned, as was their own home.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha raised the situation in Oleshky at the UN General Assembly in New York. On Monday he called what was happening a humanitarian catastrophe and demanded immediate evacuation, and on Friday at the Nations League match between the national teams of Ukraine and Hungary, a “Save Oleshky” banner was displayed.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this month acknowledged the “critical situation” in Oleshky, but accused Ukrainian forces of blocking humanitarian supplies for residents. According to the report, food was still reaching the city until May, when it had about 24,000 residents before the war, but then the flow of aid stopped as Russian forces expanded minefields and drone cover.
The head of the Oleshky military administration, Tatyana Hasanenko, working from the west bank of the Dnipro, said that since December deliveries have become much less frequent: vehicles were blown up by mines and came under drone strikes. She added that there is no electricity in the city, ATMs do not work and there is no cash, and before the war residents grew vegetables not only for themselves but also for sale to Crimea and Kherson.
Hasanenko also spoke about the September 1 attack on a food convoy: Moscow blamed Ukrainian armed forces for it, while Kyiv blamed Russian troops. Ukrainian officials say that attempts to drop food by drone help little: the products are taken by Russian military personnel, and in one case the recipient was even arrested.
Another episode, she said, involved a 74-year-old man who was clearing a basement flooded after the Kakhovka dam was blown up in 2023 in search of food supplies and was killed by soldiers when he would not let them inside. Hasanenko says that bodies lie in the city that cannot be reached because of constant drones, and dogs eat them, while Ukrainian officials believe the occupation forces are delaying the evacuation of the remaining residents, fearing a Ukrainian counteroffensive from Kherson.
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