Residents from Russian-occupied Oleshky reunite with families after evacuation operation

Residents of the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky, ravaged by years of war, arrived in Ukraine on Saturday after being evacuated via Belarus during a rare truce brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump. An AFP journalist saw the residents, some draped in Ukrainian flags, disembark from buses and tearfully embrace their loved ones in emotional scenes. Oleshky, in Ukraine's southern Kherson region, was captured by the Russian military in 2022, and had been caught in intense fighting between the two sides that left residents starving and unable to escape. Announcing the ceasefire on October 23, First Lady Melania Trump described the city as being "on the brink of disaster" and said that without her intervention, bringing aid to its beleaguered residents would have been "impossible". The evacuees whom AFP met in northern Ukraine on Saturday said that they had to eat grass to survive, and that some had hunted dogs. War in Ukraine: Evacuations under way in Russian-occupied Oleshky To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, yo...