The localised ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky has been expanded beyond the town to cover parts of the wider Kherson region, US First Lady Melania Trump said on Tuesday, in a move intended to give humanitarian convoys safe passage, Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters
"Timing was accelerated two days ahead of schedule to protect the safety of civilians and to facilitate the delivery of critical humanitarian aid," Mrs Trump said in a post on X. "The ceasefire's geographic area has expanded beyond Oleshky, within the Kherson Region, to provide safe passage for the humanitarian convoys." She said the ceasefire took effect at 4:00 a.m. Moscow time on October 27 and that General Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov, Russia's chief of the general staff, had confirmed the expanded arrangement.
No violations reported so far, Kyiv's ombudsman says
Ukraine's human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said both Kyiv and Moscow had reported no violations of the Oleshky ceasefire so far, Reuters reported via AnewZ's live coverage. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha earlier described the local pause as a potential confidence-building measure for broader peace negotiations.
Oleshky, across the Dnipro River from the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson, has been under Russian control since the opening days of the February 2022 invasion. Before the war about 24,000 people lived there; White House estimates cited in coverage of the agreement put the number who remain at roughly 1,700 to 2,000, mostly older residents, along with around 50 children. Residents have faced severe shortages of food, medicine and clean water, with mined roads and drone attacks restricting movement.
The arrangement covers only the Oleshky area and the convoy routes in Kherson region. It is not a general ceasefire: fighting continued elsewhere in Ukraine on Tuesday, and neither side has publicly said how long the local pause will last or who will monitor it.
What happens next
Attention now turns to whether the convoys actually move and whether residents who wish to leave can be evacuated under the expanded area. When she announced the truce last week, Mrs Trump said residents who wished to evacuate would receive coordinated support and transport to a destination of their choice. Ukrainian and Russian officials coordinated the humanitarian operation through their human rights channels, according to Lubinets.