Residents from the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, ravaged by years of war, have crossed into Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, after being evacuated via Belarus.
The evacuation is part of a major mission under a truce that the White House said United States First Lady Melania Trump helped broker last week.
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The residents arrived in Ukraine on Saturday after leaving Oleshky a day earlier and travelling to Belarus. Neither Kyiv nor Moscow have confirmed the exact number of people evacuated.
Ukrainian and Russian officials visited Oleshky together on Friday, delivering aid and marshalling those who wanted to leave in a rare show of cooperation between the warring sides.
“As of now, Ukrainian citizens from Oleshky have crossed the Ukrainian border in the Chernihiv region. All of them will receive the assistance they need,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Saturday. “I thank the American side and US First Lady Melania Trump for their mediation.”
Four planes carrying the Oleshky evacuees arrived in the southeastern Belarusian town of Gomel on Saturday, said Ukrainian parliament member David Arakhamia.
The group was met in Gomel by rescue workers, medical teams and Red Cross volunteers, Belarusian state media reported.
From there, they were transported to Ukrainian territory.
The civilians from Oleshky, which has suffered from major food and medicine shortages after years of fighting, began the journey out of their region in bus convoys on Friday, under a rare regional truce that is expected to continue through Sunday.
Russia and Ukraine have not specified how many people chose to leave the city, but Melania Trump posted on Friday that the humanitarian convoy could safely evacuate more than 750 people.
Those travelling to Ukraine were first bused to the Russian city of Anapa, before being flown to Belarus.
“It was a very long journey for them,” Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova said, reporting from Moscow.
“First, buses took them to Anapa on the Black Sea … And then they spent several hours getting to Gomel by plane”.
Al Jazeera’s Audrey MacAlpine, reporting from the Ukrainian side of the border where evacuees crossed, said “a lot of preparation” was under way before their arrival, with a large media presence and humanitarian aid workers on site.
“Just a few moments ago, they arrived on about half a dozen buses,” said MacAlpine.
“As they arrived, they were given Ukrainain flags and Ukrainian bracelets. We saw some very emotional scenes. We spoke to one family, two daughters and their mother. They said their father was returning and that they hadn’t seen him for three years. We were with them in that moment when they saw him. There were a lot of emotions.”
Leonid Melnikov, a member of the Ukrainian Red Cross at the border site, told Al Jazeera that aid workers were expecting about 500 arrivals.
Evacuees bound for Russia
Russia’s ombudswoman and lead representative on the evacuation mission, Yana Lantratova, said buses also transported Oleshky residents who wanted to live in Russia.
Those residents were first taken to a temporary accommodation centre in Simferopol in the Crimea region, said Shapovalova.
Aside from the first lady’s apparent role in the truce and evacuation mission, Pope Leo XIV – the first American pontiff – also pressed Russian and Ukrainian leaders to allow aid deliveries and civilian evacuations.
“The Russian military provided safe passage and safe corridors for the evacuees and were de-mining the roads near Oleshky,” said Shapovalova.
Attacks continue elsewhere
Moscow and Kyiv continued to trade attacks elsewhere even as the Oleshky truce continued.
The governor of Russia’s Bryansk region said a Ukrainian drone killed two people and injured five in the settlement of Klimovo on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said overnight Russian attacks hit Ukrainian power plants, railway infrastructure and a gas distribution facility.
The strikes left more than 200,000 households without power in the Dnipro region, and 80,000 more without power in the Kyiv region, he said.
Zelenskyy, who has long pressed partners to supply Ukraine with more interceptors, renewed that call earlier on Saturday, saying: “Russians are attacking our energy infrastructure every single day.”
While Zelenskyy welcomed the US approval of Kyiv’s purchase of 500 PAC-3 Patriot interceptors, he warned that equipment could take years to deliver and that Ukraine’s military needs the supplies more urgently.
“The United States, our European partners, and other partners around the world have sufficient stocks of PAC-3 interceptors in their warehouses,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
He urged allies to supply those existing interceptors immediately to cover Ukraine during the winter of 2026-2027, adding that partners could replenish their own stockpiles in subsequent years through the production already contracted and paid for.
Source: www.aljazeera.com
