Melania Trump secures a ceasefire in the occupied city of Oleshky, while her husband pressures Zelensky

U.S. First Lady Melania Trump has secured a local ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in the city of Oleshky, occupied by Russian troops, where the population has been starving for months. According to a White House statement released on Friday, the truce is to take effect on October 29, though Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov later announced that Russian forces would already observe it starting at 4 a.m. local time on Tuesday, October 27.

"Both countries have agreed to temporarily suspend all military operations in Oleshky in order to allow humanitarian aid to enter and to prepare for the safe evacuation of civilians through a humanitarian corridor," the statement, cited by Reuters and Agerpres, said.

"The situation in Oleshky is critical. The city, located on the front line, is on the brink of disaster. Most of those who remain in the city are elderly people who urgently need medical care, medicine, food and drinking water,"

Melania Trump said. During the ceasefire, non-military personnel from both countries will go door to door to reach residents and arrange transport for those who wish to leave, whether to Russia or to Ukraine. According to the First Lady, an unnamed American media outlet will also accompany the teams to document the process.

Oleshky, in Kherson region, lies on the left bank of the Dnipro River, across from Kherson, and has been under Russian occupation since February 2022. According to the White House, of the roughly 24,000 pre-war residents, only 1,700–2,000 people remain, "mostly elderly, and about fifty children," though Ukrainian church organizations say more than six thousand people may still live in and around the city. About 90 percent of the city was flooded when the Kakhovka Dam, then also controlled by Russian occupying forces, was blown up in June 2023; according to Ukrainian authorities and international organizations, the current famine is not a natural disaster but Moscow's doing. According to a September report by Euronews, Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said that Russian forces shoot down Ukrainian drones carrying food, confiscate or redistribute aid that reaches the ground, and detain residents found in possession of such packages. The last regular food shipment arrived in May, residents are living on grass and weeds, bodies go unburied for months, and according to a city official, the hospital basement holds more than a hundred corpses. In September, Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets called the city a "death trap" and reported that Kyiv had already worked out an evacuation plan with the International Red Cross, but that Russia at the time had refused to fulfill its part of the agreement. According to Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha,

"Russia is deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the occupied part of Kherson region."

On Friday, following the White House announcement, the Kremlin confirmed that an agreement had been reached, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying that all civilians would be allowed to leave the city and that the evacuation would take at least a few days. According to Peskov, the agreement was also discussed during the most recent phone call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and he specifically praised the First Lady's "significant contribution." This is not the first time Melania Trump has taken action on behalf of the war's victims: last August she wrote a letter to Putin regarding Ukrainian children taken to Russia, and in October she announced that, following her negotiations, eight Ukrainian children had been able to return to their families. The current agreement comes as Donald Trump is putting increasing pressure on Volodymyr Zelensky to reach a deal with Putin, as U.S. Starshield restrictions are hampering the interception of Russian drones, and Kyiv is still waiting in vain for the Patriot missiles it has already paid for. It seems that, in the White House, the wife knows better than her husband what an American leader ought to do: Melania Trump has secured food and a chance to escape for starving elderly people, while the president is pressuring the victim of aggression instead of the aggressor.

Ugar