KYIV, Oct 26 (Reuters) – Six weeks ago, Vitaly, his wife Iryna, their 13-year-old son Vlad and their cat left the besieged town of Oleshky in Russian-occupied Ukraine to escape what they feared was certain death by starvation.
Now back in Ukraine after a gruelling journey via Russia and Belarus, Vitaly views with deep scepticism a temporary ceasefire in his native town set to begin on Tuesday to allow evacuations and send in supplies.
Russia and Ukraine reached the agreement, announced by the White House on Friday, with the mediation of US first lady Melania Trump and after additional involvement from Pope Leo.
After more than four years living under Russian occupation in a town on the front line of fierce fighting with Ukrainian forces, Vitaly is not optimistic that the ceasefire can hold for long or the humanitarian situation significantly improve.
“Regarding the truce, I’m very sceptical about all this,” said Vitaly, 55, who declined to give his last name for security reasons because his relatives were still living in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
“I have a lot of respect for Melania Trump, but she does not influence dictator (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” he told Reuters, sitting in a modern apartment in the Kyiv region where his family has temporarily settled.
He said many of those remaining in Oleshky are sick or elderly and it would be difficult for them to relocate.
Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the humanitarian crisis in Oleshky. Drones present the greatest threat to civilian life, and the town is within easy reach of unmanned aerial vehicles belonging to both armies.
Because supplies are running out and the route north is blocked by the Dnipro river, some residents have walked 20 km (12 miles) to the next village to stock up on food and water. The journey is fraught with danger and locals call it the “road of death”.
TEMPORARY CEASEFIRE AGREED
Ukraine and Russia agreed to a temporary ceasefire around Oleshky that is expected to begin on October 27 at 3 a.m. Kyiv time (0100 GMT).
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Kyiv hoped it would be possible to open up Oleshky, provide access for food and medicine and allow people to leave the area.
The Kremlin has said that all civilians wishing to leave Oleshky would be allowed to do so and that the evacuation was expected to take at least several days.
Oleshky, a small town across the Dnipro from Ukraine’s regional hub of Kherson, had a prewar population of some 24,000. It is still home to around 1,700 residents, including about 35 children, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
UNDER RUSSIAN CONTROL
Russian troops have occupied Oleshky since the first days of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
It has been largely cut off from running water, electricity, gas and central heating since the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in 2023 and subsequent flooding of nearby areas.
As the war ground on, the humanitarian crisis deepened. By the middle of last year, the constant threat of drones choked off supply lines, causing food scarcity.
And from late May this year, the situation became severe, according to residents Reuters has spoken to.
Vitaly said his family survived for weeks by rationing a single cup of rice or buckwheat a day, occasionally adding a cucumber or tomato mixed with purslane, a common wild weed.
During the summer months, some residents could sell vegetables, but prices were unaffordable for most.
A kilo of tomatoes cost about 1,500 roubles ($18.50). To buy eggs, you needed to know the right people and 10 eggs would cost around 3,000 roubles, Vitaly recalled. No one was willing to sell potatoes.
After counting their meagre food stocks, and remembering last winter when the temperature in their apartment dropped to between 1 and 3 degrees Celsius (34 and 37 degrees Fahrenheit), they decided to leave.
“You look at what remained from your food supplies and realize that there is only one way for you — to go on foot or die of hunger,” Vitaly said.
Their home in Oleshky had been damaged by a drone, Iryna said, and they did not have anything left there.
ARDUOUS ESCAPE
On September 13, the family joined a small party of eight people and set out on foot. They walked for more than 20 km to the village of Radensk.
The road was heavily mined, and drones were flying overhead. Vitaly said they saw the body of a woman lying on the road as they passed by. They took with them only their autumn clothes, Vlad’s teddy bear, the cat and a handful of family photos.
They travelled from Radensk by bus deeper into Russian-occupied Ukraine, crossed into Russia after lengthy questioning by authorities at the border, and finally Belarus before returning to Ukrainian-controlled territory on September 17.
The family has spent the past several weeks settling into a new routine in the Kyiv region.
One of their first purchases was a bag of potatoes, bought to cook mashed potatoes for their son.
“The kid will be in school. We will be working. My wife needs to get her health back on track a bit,” Vitaly said.
As for his own future: “I will either join the army or will try to find a position somewhere here with weapon producers to help our country defeat its enemies.”
(Reporting by Olena Harmash; Additional reporting by Katerina Besedina, Editing by Mike Collett-White and Alexandra Hudson)
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