Trapped in occupied Oleshky: residents eat grass and dogs as blockade cuts off all food and evacuation
In Russia-occupied Oleshky near Kherson, around 1,500 residents remain cut off from food, medicine and electricity for months, with no evacuation in sight despite talks on a humanitarian corridor.
Nearly a year under blockade
Oleshky, an old Cossack town on the left bank of the Dnipro near Kherson, has been under Russian control since February 2022, when bridge links to Kherson were destroyed. Since the Kakhovka dam was blown up, the city has had no electricity, gas or drinking water. The last significant food delivery reached Oleshky in late May, when local businesspeople managed to bring in two commercial vehicles. Subsequent attempts have failed or ended in casualties — in early June, four vehicles hit mines and two people died.
Volunteers estimate up to 1,500 people remain in the city, including about 40 children, with a further 4,000 people, including roughly 150 children, in surrounding villages. Before the invasion, the hromada's population was nearly 40,000.
Grass soup and absurd prices
Residents boil soup from wild plants such as purslane, goosefoot and amaranth, eat vegetables from their own gardens, and catch pigeons and pheasants. At a makeshift market near the hospital, prices have become extreme — a dozen eggs costs roughly $18. Some risk a five-hour walk to the village of Radensk, 20 kilometres away, across mined roads and open ground watched by drones, to buy cheaper supplies. The head of the city's military administration says some families have started eating dogs, and that the situation is worsening by the hour.
Roads of death, no way out
Every route in or out of Oleshky is mined, and drones from both sides constantly hunt targets in the skies above, striking anything that moves. Two men carrying food from Radensk were killed by a drone strike this summer. Russian soldiers themselves regularly rob residents of their remaining supplies. The town hospital, once the last refuge for the starving, is now short of food and medicine itself and has begun turning away civilian patients. Ukraine has spent six months negotiating with the International Committee of the Red Cross for a humanitarian corridor, but Russia has not agreed, using the trapped population as a human shield.
