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The phone message sent out of Russian-occupied Oleshky was grimly matter-of-fact: food had finally run out for the 2,000 or so civilians, including 50 children, remaining in the city and its surrounding villages.
“We’re in Oleshky [and] we can’t get out. We’re going hungry … Right now, I’ve got absolutely nothing to eat,” read the message from a woman in the besieged city who was waiting to be evacuated by the occupying forces.
Before the war, she had weighed 110kg (17st); now she weighed just 67kg, she wrote. “At first I was glad [to lose some weight], but now I realise I’ll die without proper protein-rich food. It’s very hard. The house where we stayed last winter was also destroyed and burned down. Just like our own home … We’re still alive.”
Oleshky, across the Dnipro River from the southern city of Kherson, has become “a hell on earth”, according to Ukrainians familiar with conditions there.
This weekend, military authorities in Kherson carried out a large-scale airdrop of emergency food, water and medical supplies into the city and surrounding areas, using large drones, after Russia reportedly again rejected a ceasefire to evacuate civilians.
The military governor’s office in Kherson said an operation had dropped about four tonnes of food to 100 locations, but it was unclear how much the Russian military had intercepted.
The Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, raised the situation in Oleshky at the UN general assembly in New York this week. A “Save Oleshky” banner was lifted at a Ukraine-Hungary Nations League football match on Friday.
In a statement published on Monday, Sybiha warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” and called for an immediate evacuation, accusing Russia of standing as “the only obstacle”.
He said in an address during the general assembly: “Russia is deliberately making life there impossible. They are starving them to death.”
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, this month acknowledged the “critical situation” in Oleshky but accused Ukrainian forces of blocking humanitarian supplies intended for its residents.
Until May, food supplies were still getting through to residents of a city that had once been home to 24,000. But since May, as the occupying Russian forces expanded minefields and drone cover, the trickle of supplies has entirely halted.
Compounding the issue for civilians is the fact that Ukraine’s highly successful summer drone campaign against Russian supply lines has caused shortages for the invading forces’ frontline troops, who in turn steal what little food Ukrainian civilians have managed to save.
In messages shared with the Guardian, residents said they were down to one meal a day: soup without potato, made with courgette grown in what once were the flower boxes of the city’s apartment houses, sometimes with the addition of foraged purslane, an edible weed.
“We’re running out of everything,” said a resident early in the summer. “By August, the situation will be critical for us. And come autumn, we’ll definitely die. I’m already dying. I’m getting weaker by the day.”
On 1 September, a food convoy heading to the city was attacked. Moscow blamed the Ukrainian armed forces for the attack, while Kyiv blamed Russian troops.
Ukrainian officials say attempts to drop food by drones have done little to help: the supplies are seized by Russian soldiers and in at least one case the intended recipient was arrested.
Commenting on the airdrop over the weekend, Kherson’s military governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, described it as the largest operation of its kind so far.
“Food was delivered directly to 100 distribution points. And now I would like to address the Russians,” he said. “Civilians have absolutely nothing to do with the Ukrainian armed forces. Because of the conditions you have created in Oleshky, people simply have no choice but to take food. Do not deprive people of the chance to survive and avoid starvation.
“Russia, as the occupying power, is obliged to provide people with food, medicines and adequate conditions for healthcare and hygiene. If its own resources are insufficient, the occupying authorities must consent to humanitarian operations by international organisations and other states. Instead, we are seeing the opposite.”
He continued: “Russian occupying forces are obstructing the provision of aid to the civilian population. They are destroying vehicles attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies. And they are killing people trying to bring in food and medicines. They are also blocking all initiatives and agreements regarding the evacuation of people from Oleshky.”
According to Tetiana Hasanenko, a Ukrainian official serving from the western side of the Dnipro as the head of the Oleshky military administration, problems began in earnest late last year as access to the city from the Russian side for Ukrainian civilians became ever more difficult.
“The density of the minefields has become very high,” she told the Guardian. “From December onwards, food deliveries became much less frequent because vehicles were hitting mines and being targeted by drones. By winter, supplying food had already become very difficult.
“And it’s already been very hard. There’s no other infrastructure, electricity, therefore no ATMs, no cash. Oleshky isn’t functioning. People used to grow food in their vegetable plots before the war. There was not only enough for themselves but they used to sell it to Crimea and Kherson city. Now they cannot even grow it for themselves.”
Hasanenko described a reported incident where a 74-year-old man was digging out a cellar that had been flooded with mud after Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam in 2023, looking for stored food. Refusing to allow the soldiers into the cellar he was excavating, he was murdered by the soldiers.
“Some people have been digging out these cellars looking for canned vegetables, pickled vegetables and canned meat that people were storing up for winter,” she said.
Despite the horrific conditions in the city, Ukrainian officials believe the occupying forces are dragging their feet with the evacuation of the remaining civilians in order to discourage a Ukrainian counterattack.
Hasanenko said: “The Russians are afraid that an offensive [against Oleshky] will start from Kherson city and they are just keeping people, civilians, as human shields.”
She added: “It’s an old city. It has existed for almost a thousand years – and in all this time, people never lived in such horrible conditions, in such a hell like they do now. There are dead bodies not only in the basement of the hospital, but all over the city. They’re just lying there because you cannot pick up the dead body. The drones are flying constantly and then the dogs are eating the bodies.”
In a text message, another resident said simply: “All supplies are running out.”
Another messaged: “A week ago, the orcs [a Ukrainian term of abuse to describe Russian soldiers] came into people’s yards and dug up all the potatoes, onions, and garlic.
“They took all the food supplies from the elderly women. When one of the grandmothers started shouting, they replied that people ‘soon to be living in heaven’ like them should subsist on nothing but water.”
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