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According to her office, Melania Trump led talks with civilian
negotiators from Russia and Ukraine after meeting with U.N.
officials who briefed her on the situation in the town.
The aid mission is planned ahead of a new round of U.S.-brokered
talks between Russia and Ukraine expected next month aimed at
ending the war after more than 4˝ years of fighting.
Up to 2,000 people are stranded in Oleshky with dwindling food
and medicine. They are unable to leave because of explosive
mines and drone attacks in the area, according to the U.N.
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators as well as the militaries of
the two countries confirmed in separate statements that the
ceasefire had begun.
The local ceasefire is due to last through Saturday, or longer,
though deep mistrust between Russia and Ukraine has thwarted
previous attempts at ceasefires.
Minutes after 3 a.m., multiple ballistic missile explosions
shook Kyiv and air alerts sounded in multiple parts of the
country.
Late Monday, the capital also came under attack, when Russian
ballistic missiles damaged the grounds of a university in Kyiv,
killing one person and leaving 10 injured, city officials said.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, authorities said
attacks late Monday killed two people and injured four.
“It is important that the world sees that Russia is showing
nothing but a desire to kill and continue waging war,” Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in an online post shortly
afterward.
Oleshky is in the partially occupied Kherson region, about 550
kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Kyiv, where the Dnipro River
separates Russian and Ukrainian forces.
It was captured by Moscow’s forces on the first day of their
full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Further calamity struck
in June 2023 when floodwaters inundated the town due to a dam
collapse.
Oleshky sits across the Dnipro River from the city of Kherson,
the region’s administrative capital. Russian forces seized
Kherson in the early stages of the 2022 invasion but retreated
across the river several months later.
Negotiators involved in the aid mission said doctors, medicines,
food supplies and water would be taken to Oleshky before
evacuation corridors are opened.
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