Flour in jars and lack of medicine: how the temporarily occupied city of Oleshki survives, Zaporizhzhia

About 1,700-1,800 people remain in the temporarily occupied city of Oleshki to this day, including 47 children. The temporarily occupied city found itself in conditions of complete humanitarian isolation.

Such data was announced by volunteer Ksenia Arkhipova, who helps people and has been keeping a register of the dead in the city since the fall of 2025. According to her, 300 residents have died during this time, mainly from hunger or cold and drone attacks. This information is confirmed by the head of the Oleshkiv city military administration, Tetyana Hasanenko.

According to her, the city’s communal infrastructure is destroyed, medicines or products are not being imported, even flour is being sold in jars.

“However, there is practically no money in the city: even the conditional social payments that the Russians promised are almost impossible to receive. To apply for aid, you need to go to Skadovsk. And this is the same road that was constantly shelled even before the onset of winter, and on which people always died,” Hasanenko said.

Earlier, the Ombudsman of Ukraine Dmytro Lubinets announced negotiations with the Russian Federation on providing a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of people from the temporarily occupied Oleshki. Lubinets also reported that he had appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross with a request to help organize the evacuation of civilians. In addition, Ukraine discussed with Russia the possibility of introducing a regime of silence to create a humanitarian corridor. The terms have been set in advance, but the Russian Federation does not provide any security guarantees.

According to the Ombudsman of Ukraine, the cities of Oleshki, Hola Prystan, Stara and Novaya Zbur’ivka are actually under blockade. The population of these territories, which before the full-scale war was about 40 thousand people, has now decreased to about 6 thousand, including about 200 children. The city has a catastrophic shortage of drinking water, there is no stable electricity and gas supply, and medical care is limited. People are forced to save every sip of water and every crumb of food – said Lubinets. Evacuation and delivery of aid are almost impossible

According to the Ukrainian side, the roads around the city of Oleshki remain dangerous due to constant fighting and shelling, which complicates the delivery of humanitarian aid and the evacuation of civilians. Local residents are often forced to hide in basements.