Yuri Kobzar19:52, 16.05.26

The city has been under de facto blockade since December last year.

In the occupied town of Oleshki , located on the left bank of the Dnieper River opposite Kherson, local residents died en masse from cold and hunger throughout this winter and spring. This was stated by the head of the Oleshkiv city military administration, Tetyana Hasanenko, in an interview with the Crimea.Realities project from Radio Liberty. 

According to her, not only is the entire municipal infrastructure in the city destroyed, but there are also no food and medicines – they simply are not being brought into the city.

“I know that even flour was sold by the glass, and it was quite expensive. However, there is practically no money in the city: even the conditional social payments that the occupiers promised are almost impossible to receive. To apply for assistance, you need to go to Skadovsk. And this is the same road that was constantly shelled even before the onset of winter, and on which people always died,” Hasanenko said.

The official also claims that the Russian occupiers are not simply not fulfilling the requirements of the Geneva Convention to provide the population with everything they need, but on the contrary, they are forcibly taking away the food they find from the townspeople.

“We know that people died trying to protect their food from the occupiers… These scoundrels tried to take away food and took the life of anyone who simply prevented them from getting to the basement, where the last supplies for survival were stored,” says Hasanenko.

This information was confirmed to the publication by Ukrainian journalist Maria Semenchenko, who has relatives in Oleshki. 

“There was a case when the occupiers came to a man and found some food on him. They beat him with a rifle butt and dragged him outside, but when they heard the sound of a drone, the attackers left him and left,” she said.

According to the city administration, there may be about 2,000 civilians currently in Oleshki, including 47 children. Volunteer Ksenia Arkhipova, who helps people leave the city and coordinates food deliveries to Oleshki, believes there are no more than 1,700-1,800 of them. Before the full-scale war, the city’s population was about 24,000. 

Arkhipova has been keeping a register of the dead in the city since the fall of 2025. According to her calculations, over 300 people have died from all causes (cold, hunger, drone attacks, “shot dead”) during this time.

(c)UNIAN 2026