Ukrainian evacuees reunite with family after years trapped in Russia-occupied city
Oleshky residents had been without food, water and electricity, with many resorting to cooking garden weeds to survive.
Key points
- Evacuees from Russian-occupied Oleshky crossed from Belarus into Ukraine's Chernihiv region and reunited with relatives.
- A local ceasefire brokered with US First Lady Melania Trump's help allowed a convoy of 25 buses to leave on Friday.
- Some residents stayed behind, and officials said they would receive all necessary humanitarian assistance.
Hundreds of people evacuated from the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky have crossed from Belarus into Ukraine's Chernihiv region, where they were reunited with relatives they had not seen for years. Families cried as they embraced, and some elderly residents were so weak they were carried on stretchers after being trapped in the frontline city without food, water and electricity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked US First Lady Melania Trump for her efforts in brokering a local ceasefire that made the evacuation possible on Friday. The oldest evacuee was 94 and the youngest was one, according to Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.
A long route to safety
Ukrainian military positions lie just 5km (3.1 miles) from Oleshky, but evacuees first travelled through Russian-occupied territory to southern Russia, flew to Belarus, and were then driven across Ukraine's northern border on Saturday. Residents had a four-hour window to leave before a convoy of 25 buses, with space for 750 people, left the town on Friday afternoon, along with ambulances for people with limited mobility.
The ceasefire allowed the road out of the city to be cleared of mines and humanitarian aid to be delivered. Bridges across the nearby River Dnipro have been destroyed, and one resident who fled three weeks earlier told the BBC he had walked through 24km (15 miles) of minefields to reach safety.
all of them will receive the assistance they need
— Volodymyr Zelensky
Those who stayed behind
Several hundred people are understood to have decided to stay in the war-torn city despite widespread devastation and the lack of gas, electricity and running water. One relative told the BBC that some of the older generation did not want to leave. Lubinets said those who stayed "will receive all the necessary humanitarian assistance".
Lubinets and his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova travelled to Oleshky together on Friday, and Lubinets is the first Ukrainian official since the start of the war to visit Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. Ceasefire measures will remain in place until the end of Sunday 1 November.
