Oleshky evacuees are home; the local ceasefire lasts until the end of 1 November

Crossing in Chernihiv region

The humanitarian mission to evacuate residents of Russian-occupied Oleshky in Kherson region has ended. On Saturday, 31 October, buses carrying the evacuees crossed the state border from Belarus into Chernihiv region, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. He promised that everyone who arrived would receive help and said Ukraine expects humanitarian access to Oleshky to remain.

According to The Kyiv Independent, the trip took about 19 hours. As NV reported, the convoy first went to Anapa in Russia, from where people were flown to Gomel in Belarus and then taken by bus to the Ukrainian border. At the crossing they were met by relatives, medics with ambulances, psychologists, volunteers and police. A separate area with food and water was set up for animals: dogs, cats, a parrot and even a raccoon travelled with their owners.

Who left

Ukraine’s parliamentary human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets, who accompanied the evacuees throughout, said the oldest evacuee is 94 and the youngest child just over a year old. Among the stories: a family whose father, because of illness and a damaged staircase, could not get down from the eighth floor and was cut off from food and water, and a man who survived 16 drone attacks and four missile hits on his own house.

No official total has been released. “Wait for verified additional information,” Lubinets told TSN, stressing: “We took absolutely everyone who wanted to leave.” He said there was no filtration and no phone checks. Twenty-five buses with 750 seats had been prepared; some residents chose to go to Russia and some stayed in the town.

“We didn’t expect to make it out of there. When this whole crisis began, we thought nobody needed us,” evacuee Tetiana Hurova told The Kyiv Independent.

“All sides worked professionally”

Head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo Budanov said the evacuees were safe and that the mission “became possible thanks to the coordination and personal involvement of US First Lady Melania Trump”. “All sides kept to the agreements and worked professionally,” he wrote, adding that humanitarian special operations should turn into “systemic solutions”.

The first bilateral ceasefire

In an interview with US journalist Tony Perkins, Zelensky thanked Melania Trump for her mediation and recalled that Ukraine has backed the US proposal for an unconditional ceasefire since early 2025. “But Russia has never agreed to any ceasefire — not in energy, not at sea, not in specific territories,” he said. Oleshky, he said, was the first such case. “I hope it can be continued,” the president added.

How it began

The quiet regime in Oleshky took effect at 03:00 on 27 October, Suspilne reported. According to Lubinets, not a single shelling was recorded during 87 hours of the ceasefire, which was extended to the whole of Kherson region. The main phase began on 30 October: after the routes were demined, the convoy delivered aid in the morning and then started taking people out. The evacuation was agreed with Russia’s human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova.

What next

The quiet regime around Oleshky, introduced for the humanitarian operation, lasts until 22:59 on Sunday, 1 November. The Kherson city community reported a day without shelling. The key questions now are whether humanitarian access will be kept for those who stayed and whether this experience can become a model for other frontline and occupied communities.