Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
A rare pause in the fighting took hold in southern Ukraine on Tuesday morning.
The ceasefire covering the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in Kherson Oblast took effect at 01:00 GMT on October 27 and is set to run through November 1. The pause was signed on October 23 by Ukraine’s and Russia’s human rights commissioners, Dmytro Lubinets and Yana Lantratova.
US First Lady Melania Trump announced the truce had “commenced” and said the timing was accelerated “two days ahead of schedule to protect the safety of civilians and to facilitate the delivery of critical humanitarian aid.”
Hours after the guns fell silent, Russia’s defense minister was already at the front.
According to the Institute for the Study of War’s October 28 assessment, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov inspected the Dnepr Grouping of Forces and met its commander, Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky, on October 27. The Russian Ministry of Defense said the two primarily discussed unmanned system operations in the area.
Reinforcements the drones had held back
ISW notes that Russian forces may use the limited ceasefire to reconstitute in Kherson Oblast. Ukrainian serviceman and analyst Volodymyr Molchanov told Radio NV that intelligence shows Russia rapidly reinforcing its forces in Oleshky, bringing in what Ukrainian drones had kept out.
Lubinets and Lantratova confirmed on October 28 that no violations had been recorded in the first 30 hours of the pause, which has since been expanded within Kherson Oblast at Russia’s proposal.
Al Jazeera reported that about 2,000 people remain in Oleshky, a town whose pre-war population was 24,000. Melania Trump’s adviser Marc Beckman told Kyiv Independent that “what we’ve seen so far is tremendous cooperation from both sides.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense has not publicly acknowledged troop reinforcements into Oleshky during the ceasefire.
A route home with no final leg
Residents who choose to leave for Ukrainian-held territory are to be taken through Russia and flown to Belarus, ISW notes. The ceasefire agreement does not say how they will get from there to Ukraine.
ISW also warns that it remains unclear whether evacuees will be given a legitimate, duress-free choice to return, and that Russian authorities may argue residents who were issued Russian passports under occupation are now Russian citizens without legal recourse to go back.
Humanitarian aid is scheduled to reach Oleshky on October 30. The evacuation flight is set for October 31, and the truce expires at 22:59 Kyiv time on November 1.
