Oleshky Residents Report Starvation Under Russian Blockade
This digest was compiled by AI from multiple sources — links to the originals are below.
Residents of Russian-occupied Oleshky in Ukraine's Kherson region report eating once a day and facing starvation under a total blockade. Ukrainian volunteer Iryna-Ester Vratareva said fewer than 2,000 people remained in the city by late September, including around 50 children. The city has been largely cut off since Ukraine retook Kherson in 2022, leaving residents trapped amid drones, mines, and destroyed infrastructure.
Key Facts
- Fewer than 2,000 people remained in Oleshky by the end of September, including around 50 children, according to Ukrainian volunteer Iryna-Ester Vratareva.
- The Kakhovka dam breach in 2023 almost completely submerged Oleshky, leaving at least 500 people dead and thousands more missing, according to Ukrainian estimates.
- Humanity, a Ukrainian civic organization, says it has rescued more than 7,000 people from Russian-occupied areas.
- Oleshky was once home to around 24,000 people before Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
- Ukrainian officials and volunteers say residents are being held hostage to Russia's military goals, providing a human shield for Moscow's forces.
Starvation Reports
Residents of Oleshky describe preparing their last borshch with one beetroot, five potatoes, an onion, a zucchini, a tomato, and a little barley. One resident wrote to the city's relocated Ukrainian administration, 'We eat once a day.' Another message read, 'We'll die this autumn for sure. I'm dying already, weakening with each day.' Vratareva said on September 22 that hunger has reached a scale where, in the best-case scenario, a person can eat a clear soup and a few spoons of porridge in a day.
Blockade Conditions
Oleshky lies largely in ruins and is ringed by land mines, trapping residents in a war zone cut off from the outside world. Residents face 'endless drones, fires,' and the town feels 'like a horror movie,' one local wrote. Ukrainian officials and volunteers told RFE/RL that people in Oleshky are essentially being held hostage to Russia's military goals in the region. Russia appears determined to hold on to the territory it controls in Kherson, one of four Ukrainian regions President Vladimir Putin claimed in 2022. With little to no food, drinking water, medicine, or electricity, facing a 'total blockade' and stark exposure to Russian drones, the situation is no longer just 'critical,' Vratareva said. 'It is hell.'
Population Decline
Oleshky's population has dwindled due to flight and death caused by Russia's war and severe flooding following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in 2023. The breach unleashed floodwaters across the Kherson region, almost completely submerging Oleshky and leaving at least 500 people dead and thousands more missing, according to Ukrainian estimations. Vratareva, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian civic organization Humanity, said fewer than 2,000 people remained in Oleshky by the end of September, including around 50 children. Many residents have lost their homes, property, and documents, and have little chance of escape or obtaining legal status in Russia.
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