'We came back from hell': Oleshky evacuees reunite with families after years under Russian occupation

Hundreds of residents evacuated from the Russian-occupied front-line city of Oleshky have arrived in Ukraine's northern Chernihiv region, where emotional reunions took place on Saturday between evacuees and family members they had not seen for years. Among those on the buses was Olha, who had a single word to describe life in the city over the past few years: horror. Her husband Viacheslav, disembarking alongside her with their immediate family and their dog, put it another way: "We came back from hell." Oleshky, which Russia seized in the first days of its full-scale invasion in February 2022, is boxed in by the Dnipro River on one side and Russian forces on the other. Olha and Viacheslav had lived there with their son and daughter, both in their 30s. Even as shelling intensified, they feared escaping could be more dangerous still, because routes out were mined and exposed to drone attacks. As supplies dwindled, the couple said they attempted to find food by crossing through minefields earlier this month. "People were stepping on mines, dying and being maimed, all just to survive," Olha told the BBC. Residents too afraid to go out into the city had resorted to cooking garden weeds to survive. Their opportunity to leave came earlier this week when a humanitarian ceasefire, brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump, took effect in the Kherson region, bringing the first days of relative calm to the area in four years. Up to 6,000 people, including 200 children, were believed to still be living in Oleshky and its surrounding areas, with 1,700 in the city itself. Residents had a four-hour window on Friday to leave, with a convoy of 25 buses brought in for up to 750 evacuees, along with ambulances for people with limited mobility. The evacuees travelled through Russian-occupied territory to southern Russia, then flew to Belarus before arriving by bus at a military facility in Chernihiv on Saturday. On the tarmac, where people were processed before travelling onwards, some elderly residents were so weak they had to be carried on stretchers. For some families, the arrival moments were overwhelming. When Mykhailo Palii stepped off the bus, his daughters Dasha and Anya, who had feared they might never see him again, sprinted across the tarmac screaming and crying. Palii said he had kept many details of life in Oleshky from his family until then. "A hole was blown into the bathroom," he said. "There were drone attacks and missile strikes. It happened, but I didn't tell them about it because I knew they would worry." Tetiana and Volodymyr, a couple carrying a cat, said their home had been burned down three years ago and they had been living in an abandoned neighbour's house since. For them, the decision to leave was straightforward. "There's nothing for us to regret leaving. We don't have relatives there. Our children are married and don't live with us in the city," Tetiana said. Those who escaped remain worried about the neighbours left behind. "There are still a lot of people left there, living under those conditions," said Olha. The evacuees now face a new challenge of rebuilding their lives elsewhere. Palii said he would look for any work he could find. "There's no job I can't handle. Digging, hoeing, planting, building. I can even do demolition work." Olha said her family had no relatives elsewhere in Ukraine and would stay with acquaintances while they got back on their feet. "If we managed to survive in hell, we'll survive here too," she said.