Russia and Ukraine begin local ceasefire in frontline city

Humanitarian truce aims to evacuate residents stuck in Oleshky, who have been cut off from food and medicine

Russia and Ukraine began a localised ceasefire in southern Ukraine overnight under a US-backed agreement to evacuate civilians trapped in the Russian-occupied frontline city of Oleshky.

Russian forces will start clearing mines off the roads leading to the embattled city, where some 2,000 people have been caught in crossfire between the two armies and face severe food shortages.

Buses should take people out of Oleshky on Thursday morning, while humanitarian aid will be brought in for residents who decline to leave.

"It is critically important that this mission to rescue our people be carried out successfully and safely," Kyrylo Budanov, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on X.

The White House said first lady Melania Trump helped secure the agreement, which it announced on October 23 after weeks of campaigning by Kyiv. Pope Leo XIV had called Vladimir Putin on October 16 to push for the ceasefire.

The deal came during a push to renew peace talks to end the conflict in Ukraine. Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff met Zelenskyy in Oslo last week before travelling to St Petersburg for talks with Russia's Putin.

Putin on Tuesday held a phone call with the leaders of Norway and Finland, who hosted the Oslo talks and called on the Russian leader to end the war. Ukraine and Russia have agreed to resume peace talks in Abu Dhabi in coming days.

Oleshky, a quiet city on the Dnipro River with a population of about 24,000 people before Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion, has been cut off from the rest of the region by drone strikes and mines, making it nearly impossible for food and medicine to reach it. Most of the city does not have electricity, heating or water.

Residents "are starving, surviving on leftover garden vegetables, preserves and even snails", Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X this month.

People who agreed to leave would be taken to Crimea or Russia before they were able to return to Ukraine, people with knowledge of the discussions told the FT.

"Russia will do everything it can to de-mine in such a way that these people go towards Russia and remain there," Zelenskyy warned in an interview on Ukrainian television on Sunday. "Our people and society need to be prepared for how they will sell it: 'Look, we see thousands of people who really want to go to Russia, and those fascists were shelling them.'"

Zelenskyy accused Russia of blocking and mining the road out of Oleshky, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has alleged that Ukrainian forces had hindered deliveries of food and medicine.

Ukrainian forces have increasingly targeted Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine in what then-defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov called a "logistics lockdown" in May. The intensified drone strikes aimed to cut off Crimea and weaken Russian frontline units.

Moscow took control of Oleshky in the early days of the invasion, and the city turned into a frontline position following the Russian retreat in autumn 2022. The Russian destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in 2023 triggered a massive flood that devastated the city and probably killed hundreds of residents, an Associated Press investigation found.

One local, who fled the city in 2023, said residents had told him the situation turned critical a year ago, as it became increasingly deadly for people to drive out of the city. A humanitarian volunteer, who had been helping people flee, died in January when his vehicle hit a mine hidden by snow.

By summer this year, drone footage of the thoroughfare heading out of Oleshky showed a road littered with charred vehicles.

Russian drone units on the Dnipro have repeatedly hit civilians, including ambulances and pedestrians, in nearby Kherson and other settlements. A UN commission concluded last year the attacks "suggest a co-ordinated state policy, on the part of the Russian authorities, to force the population of Kherson Province to leave the area". The commission said the attacks "amount to crimes against humanity".

Localised ceasefires have been rare and fraught with tension since 2022. A corridor in the Zaporizhzhia region allowed civilians to cross the frontline during the first months of the full-scale invasion but was closed after a Russian missile strike on a civilian convoy killed 32 people in September 2022.

Several localised ceasefires have been brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency to repair infrastructure serving the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Separately, a Russian ballistic missile attack on Kyiv killed one person and injured 15 overnight, Ukraine's state emergency service reported on Tuesday. Missiles damaged a university building, a metro station and a bridge in the capital.