A rare humanitarian ceasefire brokered by first lady Melania Trump to save people trapped in a Russian-occupied Ukrainian town went into effect early Tuesday.
After months of warnings from Ukrainian officials about an unraveling humanitarian catastrophe in the front-line town of Oleshky, in the southern Kherson region, the White House announced last week that the first lady had secured a pause in the fighting.
The agreement would “temporarily stop all military action in Oleshky to allow for humanitarian aid to enter and to prepare a civilian evacuation through a designated safe passageway,” it said. The announcement followed a direct plea for a ceasefire that Pope Leo XIV made to to Russian President Vladimir Putin a week earlier.
Hours after it began at 3 a.m. local time (9 p.m. ET Monday), the ceasefire appeared to be holding, with the two sides conducting attacks elsewhere but not in Oleshky.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday there had been no reports of violations so far. The head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s ruling faction in parliament, David Arakhamia, said the ceasefire, “the most extensive to date,” will stay in place until late Sunday. He called it the “biggest de-escalation since 2022.”
Also on Tuesday, Putin held a phone call with the leaders of Norway and Finland about ending the war in Ukraine — a rare instance of direct talks between the Russian leader and European leaders, whom the Kremlin has accused of prolonging the conflict by supporting Kyiv.
“An important humanitarian mission has begun in Oleshky. A bilateral ceasefire has been declared in the area where the mission is taking place,” the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Kyrylo Budanov, said Tuesday in a post on X. The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that its forces had ceased firing at the agreed time “in connection with preparations for a humanitarian operation” in Oleshky.
The rare humanitarian agreement comes amid renewed pressure from President Donald Trump on Kyiv to agree to a deal to end the war, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukraine complained of gaps in intelligence sharing from the U.S. and a slowdown of Elon Musk’s Starlink service, both of which it says have now been restored. It has also said the U.S. is holding up supplies of crucial interceptor missiles.
Earlier this month, Trump also agreed to a deal allowing Russia to supply diesel to the global market, in an apparent bid to lower prices ahead of the midterm elections. The move, and his later waiving of sanctions, reversed years of American policy and raised alarm in Ukraine and Europe.
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But in a rare intervention from the first lady, the White House quoted her as saying last week that Oleshky was “on the brink of disaster” and its remaining population, composed primarily of elderly residents, was in urgent need of medical attention, medicine, food and clean water.
“The people of Oleshky have limited electricity, live amid mined roads, and endure regular military attacks,” she said. “It was abundantly clear that without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible.”
Civilian representatives from both sides will visit the town, which had a population of around 24,000 people before the war, to determine the level of assistance the remaining residents require, the statement said.
An “impartial American media organization” will document the process to ensure “that the wishes of each family are faithfully respected,” it added.
Both sides blame each other for the crisis in Oleshky.
Kyiv has accused Russian forces of mining nearby roads and using the remaining residents as human shields to prevent Ukraine’s army from conducting offensive operations in the town. Meanwhile, Russia has blamed Ukraine for “laying siege to the town” with drone strikes and preventing humanitarian aid from getting in.
Last month, the Kremlin acknowledged problems with food and medical supplies getting into Oleshky, saying its military was working to resolve them.
Ukrainian media has for months been featuring interviews with people who have managed to escape Oleshky and spoken to relatives of those who remain there — an estimated 2,000 people, including children.
Some said the town was on the verge of starvation and residents were relying on homegrown produce to survive. Others had reportedly resorted to eating grass.
With winter looming, fears of famine are growing in the town where communication is difficult because of a severely compromised internet and cellphone service in the area.
The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, which has been documenting the crisis for months, said there have been no food deliveries to the town since the end of May.
The ceasefire is likely to last several days as the Russian side has to “clear the roads of mines,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Ukraine’s TSN TV channel Sunday, adding that his forces would have to verify the area is clear.
“There is no doubt that Russia will do everything it can to clear the roads of mines so that these people head toward Russia and stay there. They are not going to simply let people go,” he said.
Oleshky, like a large portion of the Kherson region, has been occupied by Russian forces since the early weeks of the invasion.
Drone footage of the town, shared by Ukraine’s 34th Separate Marine Brigade “Borysfen” last month and verified by NBC News, shows the charred ruins of desolate residential and administrative buildings inside the town, in a rare look at the level of destruction.
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, shared another video earlier this month, geolocated by NBC News, showing residents leaving Oleshky on foot, bicycles and mopeds in what he said was a desperate search for food. He said they faced the impossible choice of being blown up on a mine or dying from hunger.
Their plight received international attention in recent weeks after the Pope directly raised the growing crisis with Putin, and European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno went on a hunger strike, saying “the people of Oleshky cannot be abandoned.”
While both Kyiv and Moscow have unilaterally announced Easter or Christmas ceasefires before, they did not revolve around a humanitarian crisis and have not involved open mediation by the U.S., making the Oleshky ceasefire an unprecedented halting of fire between the two sides.
The ceasefire could serve as a model for similar humanitarian arrangements in other areas, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, especially given the “highly positive” American involvement, including from the first lady.
Melania Trump has been involved in the humanitarian campaign to bring back Ukrainian children taken by Russia, and the White House statement said she leveraged the “communication channel” established through those efforts to bring about a humanitarian ceasefire in Oleshky.
