Former school headteacher killed in Russian drone strike following Oleshky ceasefire

Information has been emerging from the temporarily occupied Oleshky in Kherson Oblast regarding fatalities resulting from Russian attacks following the end of the ceasefire.

Source: Tetiana Hasanenko, Head of Oleshky City Military Administration, in an interview with Ukrinform

Quote: "...we were informed that former school headmaster Kostiantyn Mykhailovych Melnyk has been killed in a drone attack. Terrible events continue to occur in the hromada ."

Details: Hasanenko also said that the administration received a signal that people are not receiving the humanitarian aid brought into Oleshky during the humanitarian mission.

Those who managed to receive it say they were issued a minimal food set that will not last one person even a week. Sadly, Ukrainian authorities cannot verify what is currently happening there.

In addition, there are people who, for various reasons, were unable to take advantage of the opportunity to evacuate.

Quote: "We are receiving information from them. There are those who report that they did not even know about the evacuation. After all, they were, for instance, in basements, left without communications. Although there was a ceasefire, people in the hromada are in such circumstances that it is difficult for them to believe in anything. It is difficult to assess what is happening around them. After all, just because they [the Russians – ed.] hadn't been shooting for a while – people couldn't just draw a conclusion that there was an evacuation.

There are people with reduced mobility who were not brought to the assembly point during this evacuation. The assembly was near the hospital, and people expected that the Russians would transport them.

People also did not evacuate because they feared filtration. There were such individuals even among those who nevertheless left Oleshky. They left with the thought that this might be a 'one-way ticket', as they say. But they could in no way remain there, because in both this case and the other, death awaited them. So they took the risk.

Also during the evacuation, those who were waiting for the convoy on the highway were picked up. But there were women who did not wait and left, thinking that the buses had already passed."

Read more: Everyone's afraid, but they're pressing on: how the local ceasefire in Oleshky became a test for a broader deal

Background:

• On 2 November, US First Lady Melania Trump said that nearly 800 people were evacuated during a humanitarian mission carried out under the ceasefire in Oleshky, Kherson Oblast.
• Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets said that as part of the agreements with the Russian side, the Ukrainian authorities would not publish figures on how many residents of Oleshky chose to return to Ukraine or how many citizens left for the territory controlled by Russia.
• On the same day, Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, said that Moscow currently has no plans to conduct new "humanitarian operations" similar to the evacuation from temporarily occupied Oleshky.
• Lubinets said he and his Russian counterpart, Yana Lantratova, agreed to approach the US First Lady with a proposal to extend the humanitarian mission in Oleshky to other settlements where the situation is dire.
• Meanwhile, as evidenced by a video from the press conference of the Russian human rights commissioner and her quotes in Russian media, Lantratova said that she and Lubinets requested the US first lady to mediate and help organise "regular, at least monthly, similar missions for delivering humanitarian aid to Oleshky."

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