According to the Russian Defense Ministry, as a local ceasefire began today after midnight, their Kostroma Guards Airborne Regiment began delivering food and other essentials to the 2,000 or so trapped residents of Oleshky (Alyoshki). Supplies have been prevented from entering the town for many months, as the low-lying area on the east of the Dnepr River has been under constant fire from Ukrainian forces on the higher western bank. But Melania Trump warned that the town was “on the brink of disaster” and helped to bring about a local truce to allow for deliveries to be made. Pope Leo XIV also brought attention to the crisis there in his Oct. 17 phone call with Putin. The ceasefire is to extend at least to Oct 31.

The town of around 24,000 was severely depopulated after the June 2023 terrorist bombing of the Kakhovka dam, flooding much of the eastern bank downstream. Electricity, gas supplies, and centralized water supplies for Oleshky ended at that point. The level of propagandistic lying that surrounded the blowing up of the Kakhovka dam has been carried forward with the starvation campaign against Oleshky.

In December 2025, Kiev began an escalated blockade of Oleshky. Russian vehicles carrying food were destroyed by Ukrainian mines on the city’s only remaining access road. For ten months, Ukraine has conducted offensive military operations against the town, while Russia has found it increasingly difficult to bring in food and increasingly unsafe to try to evacuate the remaining residents. The trapped residents have tried to live off of wild birds and hares, along with garden plot produce.