Source : Reuters
KYIV, November 1 – A rare six-day local ceasefire around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region expired on Sunday night, after Ukraine’s military said it had used the pause to evacuate 167 more civilians from threatened areas near the front line.
Reuters reported on X early on November 2, 2026, Malaysia time, that the Oleshky ceasefire had expired and that Ukraine was evacuating civilians from parts of the Kherson region. The truce, which took effect on Tuesday, October 27, ended at 22:59 Ukrainian time (21:00 GMT) on November 1, according to the BBC.
167 civilians moved to safety
Ukraine’s General Staff said its units, working with local authorities, had evacuated 167 civilians from the right bank of the Kherson region to safer areas. Among them were 22 children and 21 people with limited mobility who needed special assistance, the General Staff said, according to the Kyiv Independent and DW. It added that the “South” task force had strictly observed the ceasefire while moving people along mined roads littered with destroyed military and civilian vehicles.
Kherson regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin urged residents to stay alert as the truce ran out. “I also strongly urge you not to visit the so-called ‘red zones’ – areas and settlements near the Dnipro,” he wrote on Telegram, warning that the intensity of Russian strikes there remained high.
Longest pause of the war
The pause, brokered with the help of US First Lady Melania Trump and Pope Leo, was the longest truce since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the BBC and Ireland’s RTÉ reported. It was first limited to Oleshky and later extended across the wider Kherson region. Neither side reported violations, and one Ukrainian lawmaker described it to the AFP news agency as the “biggest de-escalation since 2022”.
A senior Ukrainian official told AFP that Kyiv’s Foreign Ministry had offered to extend the truce but that Russia refused. Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, confirmed that “the ceasefire, which was in effect from October 27 to November 1, has ended” and called it “an important step in our joint humanitarian efforts”.
Oleshky residents reunited with families
Oleshky, which lies on the Dnipro River opposite the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson, has been occupied by Russian forces since the first days of the invasion. Around 2,000 civilians were still there when the truce began, DW reported, and residents had suffered severe shortages of food, water and electricity, with many cooking garden weeds to survive, according to the BBC.
The ceasefire allowed residents to leave for Ukrainian- or Russian-controlled territory or to stay in the resupplied town. Although Ukrainian positions are only about 5 kilometres away, evacuees heading to Ukraine had to travel through Russian-held territory to southern Russia, fly to Belarus and then cross Ukraine’s northern border, the BBC said. Emotional reunions took place on Saturday in the northern city of Chernihiv. Lubinets said the oldest evacuee was 94 and the youngest was one year old. It is not known how many residents chose to remain.
Fighting continued elsewhere during the truce. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had struck energy infrastructure in four regions overnight into Sunday, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes without power, while a separate strike killed two people, including a 13-year-old girl, in the Vinnytsia region, the BBC reported. LNA will continue to follow developments.
Credit : Reuters’ X, with reporting from the BBC, DW, the Kyiv Independent, RTÉ and AFP.
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