Little news trickles out from the besieged city of Oleshky, a frontline wasteland severed by mines and drones from the rest of Russian-occupied Ukraine. But one thing is clear from what has emerged: A humanitarian calamity is unfolding. There is no food, no safety and no escape.
In the autumn, we will definitely die, one resident wrote this summer. I am already dying. I am getting weaker with each day.
We’re cooking our last borscht, wrote another, with one beet, five potatoes, one onion, a zucchini, a tomato and a little barley groats to make it thicker. There are no carrots. There are no supplies of any kind.
It’s a complete blockade. And endless drones and fires. Like in a horror movie.
These messages, from some of the roughly 2,000 civilians, including about 40 children, who remain in Oleshky, were shared with The New York Times by Tetiana Hasanenko, the city’s exiled leader. They offer a glimpse into the deteriorating conditions as the Russian-held city is cut off from food and medical aid, prompting calls in Ukraine for an urgent evacuation before the population starves. Oleshky’s fate epitomizes the intractable nature of the war.
The two sides remain so far from any truce that even a humanitarian corridor to save civilian lives has been impossible to organize. Oleshky sits directly in the line of fire along the war’s southern front. It is separated by the Dnipro River from the larger city of Kherson, which Russia captured in early 2022 and surrendered later that year.
Russian forces strike Kherson from across the river in Oleshky, and Ukrainian forces strike Oleshky from Kherson. The circumstances are among the worst anywhere in Ukraine. Swarms of drones, ubiquitous mines and destroyed infrastructure make it exceedingly difficult for residents to leave or for help to arrive.
Ukraine says Russia is responsible for the crisis. Moscow’s forces, officials in Ukraine say, have attacked Ukrainian drones trying to drop aid, intimidated residents who collected supplies that did get through and confiscated food as their own troops’ stocks ran low. Hunger, Kyiv says, is being wielded as a tool of coercion.
Rather than let them leave, Russia is using residents as human shields, according to Ukrainian officials and people who have made it out of Oleshky. Moscow fears that once civilians are out of the way, Ukrainian troops say, the remaining Russian forces will be routed and lose the city. Humanitarian aid should not have to be delivered under fire by drones, said Andrii Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign minister.
He demanded that the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross find a way to safely move civilians out. The Kremlin, in a statement to The Times, acknowledged that a genuine humanitarian catastrophe was taking place in Oleshky. It said Ukraine was to blame.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are preventing people from leaving the city and are using drones to disrupt food and drinking water deliveries, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in the statement. With no solution in sight, the remaining residents, many of them older people, are left with little or no clean water, health care, electricity, gas or heat.
The last food delivery by road, said Ms. Hasanenko, the exiled city leader, was on May 26. Such drop-offs ended, she said, after several drivers were killed. Ukraine says it has tried to deliver thousands of pounds of supplies, including food and medicine, by drone.
But Russia has intercepted some of the drops, Ukrainian troops say. This weekend, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, shared footage he said showed residents trying to leave Oleshky by foot and on bicycles and motorbikes despite the risks. These are our people.
They are still alive. Help us save them while there is still someone to save, he wrote. Residents are losing hope that they will survive the winter, according to people who have had contact with them.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Résumé par HeadlinesBriefing