Kathrine Frich
Moscow agreed to the pause on Friday.
When winter approaches in a conflict zone, daily survival turns into a race against the clock.
For thousands of trapped civilians, a sudden diplomatic breakthrough has opened a rare window of relief.
Help is finally coming from a very unexpected messenger.
An unexpected peacemaker
A local truce between Russia and Ukraine began at 3am on Tuesday in the occupied southern town of Oleshky, the Daily Express reported. And US First Lady Melania Trump led the push to make it happen.
Negotiators from Washington, Kyiv, and Moscow agreed to the pause on Friday so relief workers could bring food and medicine to roughly 2,000 stranded residents. Constant drone strikes and landmines have kept those locals from fleeing.
According to the Daily Express, Melania Trump started the talks after hearing about the town during a UN General Assembly event in September. She had already worked with officials from both warring nations on a separate issue.
The truce also arrives as US President Donald Trump pushes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to strike a broader peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin after more than four years of war.
Life under siege
Russian soldiers seized Oleshky in February 2022. They used the town near the Black Sea coast as a staging ground to cross the Dnieper River and capture the city of Kherson on the opposite bank.
When Ukrainian troops took Kherson back in November 2022, Moscow pulled its forces back across the water into Oleshky. The two armies have been stuck in a stalemate there ever since.
For the mostly elderly people left behind, daily life has completely collapsed. In a White House statement cited by the Daily Express, Melania Trump warned that the community is “on the brink of disaster” and urgently needs clean water, food, and medical care.
“The people of Oleshky have limited electricity, live amid mined roads, and endure regular military attacks,” she said in the statement.
Eating grass to survive
She also defended her direct role in the talks. “It was abundantly clear that without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible,” she said.
Accounts from the ground paint a grim picture as freezing weather nears. Ukrainian media outlets, cited by the Daily Express, spoke with escapees who said the town is close to starvation.
Locals are getting by on backyard crops. Some have even started eating grass to stay alive, while the Daily Express noted it reported last month that dogs were eating dead bodies in the streets.
