Oct 17 – Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Saturday that Russian occupying forces were turning the Ukrainian town of Oleshky into a “death trap” gripped by starvation, and urged international organisations to help evacuate its residents.
Local prosecutors said on Saturday Russian forces dropped aerial bombs on the city of Kherson, on the opposite bank of the Dnipro from Oleshky, killing an ambulance driver and wounding 40 people. Sybiha made his comments on X a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged, in a conversation with Pope Leo, to cooperate in delivering vital supplies into the town in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region. Ukraine’s military has twice used drones to deliver food and medicine to the town. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the situation in Oleshky this week as “genocide.
The Kremlin acknowledged in September that Oleshky had critical problems with food and medical supplies but said Russia’s military was working to resolve them.
Oleshky had a pre-war population of 24,000 people and is now home to around 1,700 residents, including 47 children, according to Danielle Bell, head of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
