Trapped for years by heavy fighting and threatened by starvation amid constant bombardment on the front in Ukraine, hundreds of civilians made it to safety on Saturday after the most ambitious evacuation operations since Russia invaded nearly five years ago.
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The dayslong operation around the city of Oleshky is now the longest localized cease-fire since 2022, said Dmytro Lubinets, a Ukrainian lawmaker and the parliamentary commissioner for human rights. He said it would remain in effect until 10:59 p.m. Sunday local time in Kyiv.
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Russia and Ukraine have imposed restrictions on media reporting from the scene and have declined to give numbers of evacuees. Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi of Ukraine announced in Parliament on Friday that 527 people were being evacuated to Ukraine but swiftly retracted the statement.
The issue is sensitive because Russia’s ombudsman has said not many people wanted to leave, and Ukrainian officials have expressed concern that people have been living under Russian coercion. A Russian military blogger, Vladimir Romanov, posted on Telegram that 17 buses were heading to Ukraine and four buses to Russia. Soon after, he deleted his post.
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After both sides declared a localized cease-fire that started on Tuesday, Russian and Ukrainian officials traveled together, on the first mission of its kind, to evacuate civilians.
The Russian military spent two days demining access roads Then Mr. Lubinets and Ms. Lantratova set off Thursday night with a fleet of 25 buses that could carry 750 people, as well as ambulances and trucks of humanitarian aid.
The agreed-upon route for the evacuation was through Russian-held territory, so only Russian forces were involved.
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About 24,000 people lived in Oleshky in when 2022 began, but most fled early on. Yuri Sobolevsky, deputy chairman of the Kherson regional council, the local Ukrainian governing body, said many of those who remained were older people, a population that dwindled as things worsened.
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With the rising dominance of drones in this war, Oleshky fell squarely in the armies’ widening “kill zone,” where anything that moves on the ground can be seen from above as a target.
This year, the drone warfare has grown markedly more intense. Russian soldiers and drone pilots operate out of ruined buildings in Oleshky, using it as a base to strike Kherson. The city, where more than 40,000 people live, is hit daily by drones and bombs.
Ukrainian drone pilots, in turn, try to hit the Russian military in Oleshky.
“It’s the constant accumulation of drones on both sides,” said Roman Kostenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee. “The intensity of combat operations has grown due to the fact that there are more drones, more crews and the enemy has set a goal to destroy Kherson.”
In addition, most roads in and out of the city have been mined and traffic is targeted by drones. Trucks stopped delivering food and medicine to Oleshky months ago because of the danger. Many people have lost electricity, heat and gas service.
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