AERIAL PHOTO OF A BURNED-OUT VEHICLE FOLLOWING A DRONE ATTACK ON THE ROAD BETWEEN OLESHKY AND SKADOVSK. PHOTO TAKEN BY A DRONE FROM THE 34TH UKRAINIAN MARINE BRIGADE. 

By Virginie Nguyen Hoang
reporting from Kherson region
specially for Novynarnia

On May 22, Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets announced that Ukraine had agreed with Russia on the terms for the evacuation of civilians from the area around occupied Oleshky. “This concerns not only the evacuation from the city itself,” he clarified. “We named several settlements — essentially the areas surrounding Oleshky. We are talking about the evacuation of approximately 6,000 Ukrainian civilians, including, according to our information, around 200 Ukrainian children. As of today, we have technically discussed all the issues. We are waiting for a date from the Russian side when the ceasefire process will begin and the physical evacuation can start.” For some time now, horrifying reportshave been coming from this part of the Kherson region: people are suffering from hunger, disease, and Russian shelling.

Novynarnia publishes this exclusive report by our Belgian colleague, who collected stories of survival and sporadic evacuations of Oleshky residents.

Ukrainian version of the article read here.

The situation has worsened since the beginning of the year

In a video filmed by a drone from Ukraine’s 34th Marine Brigade and shared on social media, the town of Oleshky appears beneath a dramatic Hans Zimmer soundtrack. Residential buildings are burned out, some ripped open by shelling. Wrecked cars litter the roads, countless homes have lost their roofs, schools lie in ruins, and the streets resemble those of a ghost town where the roughly 2,000 remaining residents, living under Russian occupation for the past four years, spend most of their time hiding indoors. 

Aerial photo of the city of Oleshky taken by a drone from the 34th Ukrainian Marine Brigade.

“In Oleshky, entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. What was once a peaceful place has disappeared. We are now on the front line, and since January the situation has become so desperate that we have had to search through the basements of residents who fled the town just to find something to eat,” says Katia, a resident reached by phone whose name has been changed for security reasons.

In January 2026, a vehicle evacuating civilians from Oleshky to the town of Skadovsk hit a mine, killing the driver and seriously injuring two passengers. In the days and weeks that followed, other commercial vehicles and ambulances also struck mines or came under the constant threat of drones patrolling every road leading into Oleshky. Since the beginning of the year, “these have become roads of death,” Katia says from the roof of her home, where she tries to catch the weak Ukrainian phone signal that still allows her to communicate with the outside world. 

The body of a man who was delivering bread to the Oleshky and got attacked by a drone on the road. The photo was taken by someone who came to retrieve the bread seller’s body and was shared on the Telegram channel of Kseniia Arkhipova in April 2026.

Since then, evacuations as well as deliveries of food and medicine have nearly ceased altogether, placing the town under siege and triggering an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Since February 2026, desperate pleas for help have multiplied on local Telegram channels and residents’ social media pages.

“Since the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, we have had no running water in the town. We draw water from wells on private properties and heat it over wood fires to wash ourselves. We also no longer have electricity or gas. During the last attempt to deliver gas cylinders, in April 2026, the vehicle exploded after hitting a mine. Fortunately, many people had installed solar panels before the war. Along with wood-burning stoves, that is what is helping us survive” explains Katia. 

According to Tetiana Hasanenko, 51, head of Oleshky’s military administration now relocated to Mykolaiv, Russian forces have increasingly mined the roads leading into the town “out of fear that Ukrainian soldiers could infiltrate the area, but above all to prevent civilians from leaving. They terrorize them and use them as human shields.” 

Katia, in her forties, now lives alone and tries to find food for around fifty cats and forty dogs. “I will not leave the town without them,” she says, before adding: “Before, things were easier. My husband worked as a butcher at the market and always brought food home for the animals.” But her husband disappeared in February 2025. “He went into town and never came back. The Russians took him away, and nobody can tell me where he is.” 

Photo taken by Katia (a pseudonym for security reasons), showing her cooking porridge on a wood stove for her animals. March 2026.

This is far from an isolated case. According to Kateryna Kaliuzhna, who documents war crimes for the organization “SOS EAST”, “several people who returned from Oleshky testified that civilians were regularly abducted and taken ‘to the basement’ to be interrogated and tortured.” Some never return.

Corpses Devoured by Dogs

Of the town’s 24,000 pre-war residents, only around 2,000 are believed to remain, most of them elderly or mobility-impaired people who fear that evacuation would be too expensive, too physically exhausting, or that they would be unable to find housing in Ukrainian-controlled territory. Yet, according to Oleshky’s Ukrainian military administration, 51 children are still living in the town. 

“Children here barely communicate with one another anymore because they never go outside. It’s too dangerous. There are no activities for them except survival. Just this week, I discovered that two teenagers were living near my house,” says Oleg, another resident contacted via messaging, whose name has also been changed. 

Reached in early May, he described a devastated town where children no longer have access to education. “Schools are closed. The internet connection is poor and expensive, and there is not enough electricity to recharge computers or tablets. It’s a serious problem,” he says, adding that even finding clothes in children’s sizes has become difficult.

Videos and photographs sent by residents show streets littered with garbage; municipal services no longer exist. Among the debris are also lifeless bodies: the carcass of a horse being eaten by a dog, as well as human remains. 

Image from a video taken by an Oleshky resident showing a dog eating the flesh of a horse carcass lying near a pile of garbage in a city street, May 12, 2026.

“The bodies are mostly near the river and in streets close to the forest. There are many places like that in residential areas. Dogs eat the corpses. At the main market, they sometimes run around carrying human arms or legs,” Oleg explains.

Flee or Die

The health situation in Oleshky is equally alarming. With no funeral services and no electricity to power morgues, civilians killed by drones or shelling sometimes remain in the streets for days before being buried in gardens. The bodies of Russian soldiers are not recovered either and are also eventually eaten by animals. 

In the town’s only still-functioning hospital, “the few doctors who remain sometimes perform miracles. They try to organize evacuations for severely wounded people, but the lack of medicine and staff condemns people who could have been saved under normal medical care,” Oleg writes. 

He managed to stockpile food, firewood, and solar batteries since last summer to support his relatives, but he is still waiting for an opportunity to evacuate. 

Despite the mines and Russian drones hunting any vehicle moving around the town, some traders’ vans still manage to enter Oleshky to sell food at exorbitant prices before leaving  with residents desperate to flee. Ambulances transporting severely wounded patients to the hospital in Skadovsk also carry civilians trying to evacuate. 

“When I crossed the border into Ukraine, the first thing I did was to touch the ground. I wanted to hold this land in my hands. I will never forget that moment,” says Olena, 63, who evacuated Oleshky on April 27 together with her husband and her 84-year-old mother. 

Transported in an ambulance, the family endured a four-day journey through the filtration procedures imposed in temporary occupied territories, Russia, and Belarus even though the city of Kherson lies barely ten kilometers from Oleshky on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River, now entirely mined and cut off after the destruction of the Antonivka Bridge. “When we took the road toward Skadovsk, the passenger who was sitting next to the driver, got out and walked in front of the vehicle to show where to drive and avoid the mines. Drones watched us constantly. It was terrifying,” Olena recalls. The family was assisted by a network of people who guided them from one town to another in exchange for money, a logistical operation organized and financed by Olena’s sons, who have been living in Mykolaiv since 2022.

Olena says she had delayed leaving because she feared her mother would not survive the journey, which ends with more than a kilometer and a half of walking between Belarus and Ukraine. “But we quickly realized we would not survive another winter. Living conditions had become unbearable,” she says through tears. 

In recent months, she explains, they survived mostly on noodles and potatoes found in abandoned basements. “I lost ten kilos and my husband lost fourteen.” During winter, they heated themselves with a wood stove but slept fully dressed. Their kitchen was damaged in a drone strike, and their garage burned down after shelling. “Russian soldiers gradually moved their positions from the surrounding woods into civilian areas, using residents as human shields,” she says.

Olena and her husband also narrowly escaped several drone attacks. “In February, a vehicle managed to enter the town to supply a shop. We rode there on bicycles, but a drone was following us. I prayed during the entire trip. On the road, we saw the body of someone who had just been killed. Then, at the shop, there was chaos, people were starving and fighting. We came back with 300 grams of sausages. Was it really worth it?” she asks herself. 

Photo taken by a resident of Oleshky showing many people gathered around the sale of food products that have become scarce in the city, May 13, 2026.

Now, she and her family are slowly adapting to normal life again in Mykolaiv, where their son found them an apartment. “This morning, I was able to put nail polish on my nails for the first time in three years,” she says with a smile on her face. 

Olena (a pseudonym for security reasons), in her Mykolaiv apartment where she evacuated from Oleshky on April 27.

Despite that relief, Olena remains haunted by what she left behind: her house, her animals, and an entire abandoned life. “When Russian soldiers know a house is empty, they break in and steal everything.” She also describes a permanent climate of fear and violence under occupation. According to her, men were regularly arrested in the streets before disappearing.

Olena (a pseudonym for security reasons), proudly shows off her manicure: “I hadn’t had my nails done in three years”.

Humanitarian Corridor

Several initiatives have emerged from Ukrainian-controlled territory to help Oleshky residents evacuate, whether through individuals or organizations. 

Ksenia Arkhipova, 42, originally from Oleshky, has established a logistical network to finance drivers willing to travel into the town. This former police officer created a Telegram channel where residents and their relatives can request evacuations, but also share information about deaths or disappearances. 

Photo of an evacuation of Oleshky shared on the Telegram channel of Kseniia Arkhipova. May 2026.

“I keep a record of every death and its cause in order to pass this information to international organizations and expose these war crimes,” she explains. According to Arkhipova, people who manage to leave Oleshky often suffer from deep psychological trauma. “Sometimes it takes them a year to return to normal life and realize that here there is electricity, gas, hot water, a washing machine… all these basic things.”

Ukraine, Kherson: Photo sent to Kseniia Arkhipova. In the photo, a man shows her a hand injury sustained in a landmine explosion on one of the city streets on May 7, 2026.

The organization “Helping to Leave” also coordinates remote evacuations. Sofiia Gedzenko works as an evacuation coordinator, particularly for people with reduced mobility or those requiring medical assistance. “I organize the logistics, transportation, the search for all necessary assistance during the journey, maintain contact with evacuees, and deal with unforeseen situations because some people’s health can deteriorate along the way,” Sofiia explains. But even this structured organization offers no guarantees. “Sometimes people are turned back at checkpoints. And then there is the constant danger of mines and drones. In Oleshky, entering and leaving the town is extremely risky,” she says. 

Through numerous testimonies collected from evacuees, Kateryna Kaliuzhna of “SOS EAST” argues that “we are trying to make the international community understand that what is happening in Oleshky constitutes a deliberate and systematic violation of international humanitarian law. The occupying forces are using a humanitarian catastrophe as a weapon against the civilian population.”

On May 6, 2026, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairsissued a statement on the situation in Oleshky and the occupied territories of the Kherson region, calling on the international community to pressure Russia into establishing a secure humanitarian corridor to evacuate residents. A week later, President Volodymyr Zelenskyalso called on international organizations to help end the humanitarian crisis. 

Finally, Dmytro Lubinets told journalists that the issue of a humanitarian evacuation for Oleshky residents had been discussed with Russia and that a ceasefire date was now awaited in order to begin operations. Several possible routes are reportedly being studied to ensure the safe evacuation of civilians toward Ukraine. Because in Oleshky, as long as nothing changes, “people are no longer living; they are waiting for death. Action must be taken now,” concludes Tetiana Hasanenko, head of Oleshky’s military administration.

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https://novynarnia.com/2026/05/28/report-from-occupied-oleshky-eng/