A joint delegation of representatives from the USA, Ukraine and Russia arrived on Thursday at the point from which humanitarian aid is to be brought on Friday to the Russian-occupied Oleshky in the Kherson region. This was reported by Davyd Arakhamia, parliamentary group leader of the Servant of the People party, in a Telegram post, according to the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
“A delegation of representatives from Ukraine, the USA and Russia has reached the point from which aid will be delivered to Oleshky tomorrow,” Ukrainska Pravda quoted Arakhamia on Thursday, 29 October. Journalists from all three countries were also on site to ensure, according to him, a “as transparent as possible” course of the next stage of the humanitarian mission. According to the news agency Interfax-Ukraine, Arakhamia also said this in a Telegram post on Thursday.
Arakhamia also said, according to the news agency UNIAN, that the Ukrainian delegation led by the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, had set off towards Oleshky on Thursday. The course of the operation would be observed and reported as soon as there was a connection, UNIAN quoted Arakhamia. Lubinets himself stated, according to UNIAN, that the clearing of the routes needed for the mission was currently under way, while the humanitarian cargo that was to be brought to Oleshky “tomorrow” was being assembled in parallel.
54 hours without incident
The ceasefire has been in force since 27 October at 3.00 a.m. Kyiv time and is to last until 22.59 on 1 November. According to Lubinets, by Thursday it had already held for 54 hours without any violation being recorded. Both sides were fully adhering to the agreed arrangements, he said, according to the English-language service of NV. This was also thanks to constant communication with the Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova; they were in contact and coordinating implementation. Lubinets expressly thanked US First Lady Melania Trump, who was personally attending to the mission and the aid for the civilian population in Oleshky.
On 23 October, according to NV, the White House announced that Melania Trump had achieved a local ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in Oleshky. In the night to 27 October, Lubinets had announced the truce in Oleshky and other areas connected with the mission; later the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, Kyrylo Budanov, confirmed the start of the humanitarian mission. Melania Trump subsequently stated that the ceasefire had been extended beyond Oleshky so that humanitarian convoys could pass safely.
How the people are to get out of Oleshky
Under the agreements between the Russian and Ukrainian sides, the evacuation route for the residents of Oleshky is to lead through Russia and Belarus into Ukraine. According to Ukrainska Pravda, the US broadcaster Fox News published a document bearing the signature of the Russian Human Rights Commissioner Lantratova. According to it, residents who want to be evacuated to Ukraine are first to be brought to the airport of the city of Anapa in Russia’s Krasnodar region. From Anapa, the Ukrainian delegation and the residents are to be flown by a Russian Defence Ministry military transport aircraft to the airport of the city of Homel in Belarus. This will probably happen on Saturday, 31 October.
According to NV, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha stated on 17 October that about 1,700 people were still in Oleshky. They lacked food and medicines, and there was no safe route for evacuation. Pope Leo XIV had asked for a humanitarian truce in Oleshky. The city in the Kherson region has been cut off from regular food supplies since May.
According to Melania Trump, four American journalists from the broadcaster Newsmax, who are accompanying the mission on site in Oleshky, are to ensure transparency. On the platform X, she wrote, according to Hromadske, that the journalists would report independently on the operation as “neutral observers”. Her statement also quoted a post by the Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who declared that Russia welcomed the Newsmax journalists.
According to UNIAN, the think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) sees one of the main questions of the operation as how the Russian authorities treat the Ukrainians and whether they leave them free choice to return to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government. The ceasefire runs until the evening of 1 November – after that it will become clear whether the deliveries and the evacuation can be completed as planned.
