A local truce between Ukraine and Russia aimed at allowing humanitarian aid into the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky appears to be tentatively holding, hours after Russia fired missiles on a university campus in Kyiv.
Both sides said the ceasefire brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump had begun at 3:00 am local time and was in effect through the morning.
AFP was not able to immediately verify whether there had been a decrease in fighting.
The war-ravaged city in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region has been caught in middle of the fighting since 2022, when it was seized by Russian forces at the start of their invasion.
Former residents told AFP earlier this year that those remaining in the city were starving, lacked medicine and could not easily leave.
“In connection with preparations for a humanitarian operation in the area of Oleshky, Kherson Oblast, have ceased fire in the Kherson sector and introduced a ‘regime of silence’,” Russia’s defence ministry said on its Telegram channel overnight.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s Marine Corps, Pavlo Drogal, told reporters that “the enemy is observing the ceasefire” as of 9:00 am local time.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said there had been no reports of violations.
Kyiv’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said earlier on Telegram that “the sides are adhering to the agreements that we reached”.
But elsewhere, Russia continued to pummel the rest of Ukraine with air barrages.
Ballistic missiles struck a university campus in Kyiv on Monday evening, damaging a dorm and wounding 12 people, including five students and university staff, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Another strike hit the capital’s Southern Bridge a major transport artery damaging infrastructure for the Kyiv metro.
In Russia, two people were killed “as a result of explosive devices being dropped” on the western city of Bryansk, regional acting governor Yegor Kovalchuk said.
– ‘Forgotten what bread is’ –
The ceasefire in Oleshky comes as the Ukraine war grinds through its fifth year, with no signs of a broader end to the conflict.
Announcing the agreement last Friday, US First Lady Melania Trump said civilian officials from both Russia and Ukraine would visit residents in their homes and “determine the level of assistance they require”, including with evacuation.
“I anticipate some will want to go to Russia, and some to Ukraine,” she said.
Newsmax, a right-wing US cable network, has said it had been granted “exclusive television access” to accompany observers entering the city on Thursday.
Russian state television on Tuesday aired reports purporting to show several people leaving the city on bikes, without saying when the images were filmed.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine have said how long the truce will last.
The city, on the southern bank of the Dnipro River, was seized by Russian troops in 2022.
The population has since dropped from about 24,000 to around 2,000 today, including as many as 50 children, according to Ukrainian and US estimates.
Former residents told AFP earlier this year that remaining residents were starving, forced to hunt pigeons or subsist on whatever they had in their garden.
“They’ve forgotten what bread is. You need flour for bread, and there’s not even flour left,” said Olga, who was in touch with two families still in Oleshky.
– Videos show destruction –
The Ukrainian military has released drone footage of the town showing rows of empty apartment blocks, some charred by fire or partially destroyed by fighting.
Other videos have shown Ukrainian authorities using drones to dispatch medicine and food to remaining residents.
The Russian military does not routinely grant international media access to areas under Russian occupation, including Oleshky.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a conflict that has spiralled into Europe’s deadliest since World War II.
Russia occupies around a fifth of its neighbour: the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, most of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk and large parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine are set to resume in November, having been effectively frozen since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in February.
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