U.S. first lady Melania Trump has secured a localized ceasefire in the Russian-controlled town of Oleshky in southern Ukraine to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid and facilitate civilian evacuations, the White House said Friday.
Starting next Thursday, Oct. 29, civilian leaders from Russia and Ukraine will visit the estimated 2,000 remaining residents of Oleshky to determine the level of assistance they need. Most of them are elderly, while around 50 children have also been unable to leave, according to the White House.
“Residents who wish to evacuate will receive coordinated support and transportation to their preferred destination. I anticipate some will want to go to Russia and some to Ukraine,” Melania Trump said in a statement.
The first lady noted that her intervention allowed both Russia and Ukraine to assign teams to work on the technical terms of the process, including de-mining the heavily mined roads. “All parties have worked around the clock since that moment,” she said.
Oleshky, located across the Dnipro River from Ukrainian-controlled Kherson, has been under Russian occupation since the early weeks of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Moscow and Kyiv both accuse each other of blocking supplies to the population of the town, which Ukrainian forces have been trying to retake.
Earlier, the Kremlin said that President Vladimir Putin had discussed the situation in Oleshky with U.S. President Donald Trump and told him that Russia’s human rights commissioner was working on humanitarian efforts there.
Putin also told Pope Leo in a phone call last Friday that he supported a Vatican initiative to help deliver supplies to civilians in Oleshky and was ready to cooperate on the matter. At the same time, he laid blame for the dire humanitarian situation in the town on Ukraine.
The White House announcement of a localized truce comes as Trump pressures Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to reach an agreement with Putin to end the war.
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