Oleshky evacuees reach Ukraine after 19-hour journey through Crimea, Russia and Belarus

Hundreds of Ukrainian civilians who had spent years trapped in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky stepped onto Ukrainian-controlled soil on Saturday, Oct. 31, many of them in tears — the end of a 19-hour journey that wound through occupied Crimea, a Russian port city, and Belarus before finally crossing the border into Ukraine's Chernihiv region.

Four charter flights carrying the evacuees landed in Gomel, in southeastern Belarus, before buses completed the final leg across the border. David Arakhamia, head of President Volodymyr Zelensky's parliamentary faction and a member of the Ukrainian delegation that traveled to Oleshky, announced the completion of the airlift on social media.

The last, fourth plane has touched down in Gomel, Belarus. In just a few hours, all citizens of Ukraine evacuated from Oleshky, together with the Ukrainian delegation, will be on the territory of Ukraine.— David Arakhamia, head of Zelensky's parliamentary faction

The evacuees were met at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border crossing by relatives, health workers with ambulances, aid organizations, and police. Zelensky confirmed the mission's success and thanked all parties involved, including U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, whose mediation secured the localized ceasefire that allowed the operation to take place.

When there is the attention of the world, there is the salvation of people. Further de-escalation steps and a real approach to peace are also needed.— Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine

The operation was the largest publicly known humanitarian evacuation of civilians from Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, according to the Kyiv Independent. An 87-hour localized ceasefire in the Kherson region made it possible; Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets and Russia's Commissioner for Human Rights Yana Lantratova coordinated the pause in fighting, with Melania Trump serving as mediator.

The route itself reflected the geography of the front lines. Because Ukrainian territory lies just five kilometers from Oleshky across the Dnipro River, a direct crossing was not possible through heavily contested sectors. Buses carried residents out of Oleshky through Russian-occupied Crimea, passing through the Armiansk checkpoint before continuing to the Russian Black Sea port city of Anapa in Krasnodar Krai, where they boarded flights bound for Gomel.

At Armiansk, residents were given a choice: travel onward to Ukraine, or go to Russia. According to Newsmax journalist Alex Salvi, one of the only non-Russian journalists granted access inside Oleshky during the operation, approximately 750 people had registered for evacuation. Of those, 11 buses were headed to Ukraine and four to Russia, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman Lubinets, who led the delegation into Oleshky on Friday, Oct. 30, posted video footage of evacuees stepping off a plane in Gomel alongside their pets.

We will be home soon! For now, we are on the territory of the Republic of Belarus — together with our people and even their beloved pets!— Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman

For those who made it out, the relief was visceral. Liudmyla Burychenko, 39, said she had always believed evacuation would come and left as soon as the opportunity arose, arriving with her husband Valentyn. Their son had left earlier.

There were drones there flying around (in recent months). We took shelter in the basement.— Liudmyla Burychenko, evacuee from Oleshky

Iryna Mohylna waited at the border for her godfather, whom she had last spoken to on Oct. 27; her next glimpse of him came through a video showing him boarding an evacuation plane. She described the emotional weight of his departure.

It's the pain of what has happened and of what is still to come… I understand his age and why he chose not to leave. He spent his whole life working, building something for himself, and now he has to leave it all behind. It's impossible to put into words.— Iryna Mohylna, relative of an evacuee

Positioned on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River directly opposite the Ukrainian-controlled city of Kherson, Oleshky has been under Russian occupation since the earliest days of the full-scale invasion. Before the war, the city had a population of around 24,000. By October, Ukrainian officials estimated only around 2,000 people remained, including nearly 50 children — most of them elderly or ill. The city was also severely damaged by flooding after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam upriver in June 2023.

In recent months, conditions in Oleshky had deteriorated sharply. Russian forces imposed a blockade on the town that cut off humanitarian organizations from delivering aid. Residents described severe shortages of food, drinking water, electricity, and medical supplies. Some told the Guardian they had survived on a cup of rice or buckwheat a day, sometimes supplemented with a tomato, cucumber, or wild plants. Leaving independently was extremely dangerous, with mined roads, constant drone attacks, and Russian interrogations at checkpoints all posing threats. A landmine incident in September left one person dead and four others wounded among those who had tried to flee, according to Tetiana Hasanenko, head of the exiled Oleshky City Military Administration.

It's a celebration because we're bringing our Ukrainians home. You know how much they suffered there. It is simply genocide in the 21st century.— Andrii Zhydenko, director of Chernihiv Regional Hospital

The ceasefire that enabled the operation was described by Lubinets as unprecedented in scope.

This is the first time since 2022 that a ceasefire has been established across such an extensive stretch of the frontline and has been maintained for such a significant duration.— Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman

The Kremlin, however, was careful to limit the diplomatic significance of the arrangement. On Friday, it characterized the Oleshky operation as a special case that was 'difficult to extrapolate' to the wider search for a peace settlement, the Guardian reported.

The operation also carried a significant information dimension. Russia deployed a large media presence to document the evacuation, compared with only two Ukrainian and two American journalists. The Kyiv Independent, citing the Media Initiative for Human Rights, reported that Russian forces chose an evacuation route that bypassed the town's most heavily destroyed areas and cleared debris from roads before the convoy passed through. A volunteer with prior ties to Oleshky told the Associated Press that Russian military personnel were inspecting vacant homes and in some instances occupying them, while also pressing residents to leave for Russia rather than Ukraine.

Several hundred people chose to remain in Oleshky. Lubinets, speaking to one resident who raised the issue, said he would work to ensure humanitarian aid continued to reach those who stayed.

I've been told that it's their own choice. At the very least, we'll do what we can to ensure that somehow humanitarian aid gets through.— Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman

The ceasefire was due to last until Sunday evening, according to Euronews. Whether the operation opens any path toward broader humanitarian arrangements — or remains an isolated episode — is the question now hanging over what was, by any measure, an extraordinary 19 hours.

Why it matters — The Oleshky evacuation is the largest known humanitarian operation to extract civilians from Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, and the first to use a US-mediated local ceasefire for that purpose — a potential template, or a one-off, for the war's next phase.

Reported by reuters.com, cbc.ca, kyivpost.com, kyivindependent.com, euronews.com, belfasttelegraph.co.uk, theguardian.com