Evacuees from Russian-occupied Oleshky reunite with families after years apart

There were emotional scenes as people evacuated from the devastated Russian-occupied city of Oleshky crossed from Belarus into Ukraine's Chernihiv region, with families crying as they reunited with relatives they had not seen for years. Among them were sisters Dasha and Anya Palii, who sprinted across the tarmac screaming towards the bus carrying their father Mykhailo after three years of fearing they would never see him again. Their mother Zhanna clasped his face and stroked his forehead again and again, as if checking he was the same man she had left behind. He promised her they will now get married. Some elderly residents were so weak they were carried on stretchers. They had been trapped in the frontline city without food, water and electricity, with many resorting to cooking garden weeds to survive. Tetiana and Volodymyr, an older couple carrying their cat, told the BBC their home had been burned down in the first year of the war and they had since lived in the abandoned house of a neighbour. They said they instantly decided to leave but feared the journey could be disrupted, and must now work out where to go next and how to rebuild their lives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked US First Lady Melania Trump for her efforts in brokering a local ceasefire that paved the way for the evacuation on Friday. In a post on X, he said the evacuees will receive the assistance they need and that government agencies and regional and local authorities must work effectively to help people adapt. Although Ukrainian military positions lie just 5km (3.1 miles) from Oleshky, evacuees first had to travel through Russian-occupied territory to southern Russia, where they flew to Belarus, before being driven across Ukraine's northern border on Saturday. Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said the oldest evacuee was 94 years old and the youngest was one. A humanitarian ceasefire took effect across the frontline region of Kherson on Tuesday, providing the first days of peace in the area in four years, following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Oleshky was home to 24,000 people before the war. Escape had been highly dangerous because routes out were mined and subject to drone attack, bridges across the nearby River Dnipro have been destroyed and sources say the riverbank has been mined. One resident who fled three weeks earlier told the BBC he had walked through 24km (15 miles) of minefields to reach safety. The ceasefire allowed the road out of the city to be cleared of mines and humanitarian aid to be delivered. Residents had a four-hour window to leave before a convoy of 25 buses, with space for 750 people, departed the town on Friday afternoon, accompanied by ambulances for people with limited mobility. The convoy included as many ambulances as coaches, and many evacuees were seen hobbling on crutches or needing wheelchairs. Several hundred people are understood to have decided to stay in the war-torn city, despite widespread devastation and the lack of gas, electricity and running water. Lubinets said on Friday morning that those who stayed would receive all the necessary humanitarian assistance. Lubinets and his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova travelled to Oleshky together on Friday, setting off from Armiansk in the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula. Lubinets is the first Ukrainian official since the start of the war to visit Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, and Zelensky praised him and his team for helping move evacuees to safety. Lubinets said he cooperated with Lantratova in the interests of saving lives, but some in Ukraine have recoiled at the sight of him standing beside a representative of the occupying power. Russia said on Thursday that it had prepared dozens of tonnes of aid, including food, medicine, hygiene products and fuel for generators, for residents who do not wish to leave. Despite the ceasefire in Oleshky, the war has continued. Zelensky said Russia had attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure, hitting electricity substations, thermal power plants and gas infrastructure, while Ukraine's military said it hit a major Russian producer of missile fuel in the Rostov region. Negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the US are due to resume ceasefire talks in Abu Dhabi in early November after discussions were suspended earlier this year due to the Iran war.