Residents Evacuated From Russian-Occupied Oleshky Reach Ukraine After Localized Ceasefire
The rare truce let civilians leave a town cut off by fighting, with aid groups and relatives greeting evacuees as some chose Russia instead.
- On Saturday, October 31, 2026, hundreds of residents evacuated from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Oleshky landed at Gomel airport in Belarus, marking a major rescue operation under a rare ceasefire.
- A US-brokered localized ceasefire, mediated by First Lady Melania Trump and Pope Leo XIV—the first American pontiff—enabled the evacuation, the first joint humanitarian operation in over four years of war.
- Evacuees traveled by bus through Crimea to Anapa, Russia, before boarding planes to Gomel; a humanitarian fleet of 25 buses and ambulances transported residents on the complex route.
- Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets confirmed evacuees crossed the Ukraine-Belarus border Saturday, where relatives greeted them with coffee and emotional reunions at aid stations.
- Approximately 2,000 residents remained in Oleshky from a pre-war population of 24,000, with the ceasefire set to conclude Sunday evening as humanitarian operations wind down.
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Refugees from Ukraine’s besieged Oleshky are returned to safety
Refugees from the besieged southern town of Oleshky have returned to free Ukrainian territory and reunited with family members. Buses filled with the beneficiaries of a short-term ceasefire crossed back into Ukraine after a roundabout, U.S.-mediated journey took them through the nation’s occupied southern region to a Russian flight that landed in Belarus, and then finally back over the border.
Hundreds of Ukrainians who evacuated the Russian-occupied city have been reunited with their families on the Ukrainian side of the border after a local ceasefire allowed them to leave the city.
Starved residents of Russian-occupied Oleshky return to Ukraine | Honolulu Star-Advertiser
CHERNIHIV REGION, Ukrain >> Starved and exhausted residents from the Russian-controlled town of Oleshky crossed into Ukraine today in a major return of civilians under the first humanitarian truce of its kind in more than four years of the war.
Residents of Olechky, a city in southern Ukraine under Russian occupation, arrived in their country after being evacuated through a truce.
Stuck for months, without food or electricity, the population of this town close to Kherson was able to leave the place by means of a truce between Kyiv and Moscow. And escape from a daily newspaper described as "terrifying".
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