Occupied Oleshky have fallen into a deep humanitarian crisis. 73-year-old Ms. Nina, together with her husband, managed to get out of there after years of occupation and a complete blockade that has been going on for several months. At the start of the full-scale invasion she did not leave, hoping for a quick liberation. But after four years she had to change that decision. Below – a first-person account of what was experienced in the occupied city, without retouching or abridgment.
Occupiers evicted us from the apartment
We are entrepreneurs. We sold clothing and shoes. We traveled to villages. On February 24 we were just getting ready early in the morning to go to the market. We planned to work in Mali Kopani. And our daughter called us that the war had begun. We stayed at home. And it’s good that we did not go…
They (Russians, – МОСТ) came with automatic rifles and said: “Get out, free our apartment.” At that time my husband’s elderly mother, who lived with us, was still alive. We said: where will we go? “We don’t care, even to the basement” – that was the answer. My husband begged them to let us stay the night. He gathered some things and we went to the house we had as a dacha. There had already been five “impacts” there. I really don’t know by what miracle we remained alive. Our yard dog was torn in half… We lived next to the hospital and the school. They often get hit there. As for the hospital – few people work there now. They said that at first there were large salaries there, about 80 thousand [rubles]. But then it all boiled down to 20-25 thousand [rubles], so few wanted to work. There is a pharmacy in the hospital, but there are almost no medicines there.
Dead bodies in the streets
After the liberation of Kherson a stench like from burned bodies began to appear in Oleshky periodically. It was a pungent, sweetish smell that made it impossible to breathe. We think that the occupiers are burning their dead. Also there are dead Russians lying in the streets, dogs tear them apart and eat them. In general there are many stray dogs in Oleshky, but no cats — probably the dogs ate them. Soldiers’ bodies have not been removed since autumn, so on Zhitloselyshche there are already skulls and bones lying in the middle of the road. A dead occupier has been lying near the winery for a long time, with his hands and legs bitten off; their dogs brought them into people’s yards… And to the question “Why don’t you take your own?” the orcs answer: “They are not ours!”…
Occupiers fear Ukrainian Armed Forces’ drones
At first the occupiers walked openly around the town, shopping at the market. They had automatic weapons and uniforms, only their faces were masked. For a time women who came from Russia accompanied them. They said: “We like it here, everything is very tasty. We’re here forever!”. Then the occupiers began to enter the market not in groups but one or two at a time. Then they even started to disguise themselves as locals so they wouldn’t be detected. We see someone walking in civilian clothes with some sort of bar in his hands, like a resident, about to repair something. Now after midday occupiers don’t show themselves on the streets at all. They also often dress in women’s clothing to mislead Ukrainian drone operators.
A blockaded city
The authorities, that is, the occupation authorities, have not been seen in Oleshky for several years. Collaborators fled somewhere deep into the left bank. There has been no electricity in the town for three years: wires are torn down, poles lie on the ground. Gas was cut off on July 8, 2025, and there is no heating either. Yes, this extremely cold winter two sisters in the “Olympic houses” (the high-rises in this area of Oleshky began to be built in the year of the 1980 Olympics, – МОСТ) suffered frostbite because there was no way to heat themselves. We had a potbelly stove in our house and we burned it, but many do not have that possibility. Water in Zhitloselyshche disappeared immediately after the Kakhovka HPP dam was blown up. Our town was finally turned into a blockaded town after that New Year. The occupiers mined the highway. Food has not been supplied since February, except for two times. And people almost fought over it. No shop in the town works. Earlier food was brought from Skadovsk to the small market that opened near the hospital. You could buy dairy products, sausages, etc. It was like that until the end of January. And then a man would go and there would be no deliveries. Locals began to bring out their own preserves, some sugar, whoever had stocks, that was it. Although this year when it warmed up, chickens started to lay. So people brought eggs to the so-called market, selling them for 800-1000 rubles per dozen (400-500 hryvnias).
And how did we get through the winter? Last year we managed to grow vegetables. We had our own potatoes and onions. And we canned some other things. But this year it became scary not only to go to the garden but even to step into the yard. For example, I no longer reached the gate. There are many burned houses nearby. Up until November of last year humanitarian aid was brought to Oleshky. Each time it was the same: four cans of stew, four cans of canned goods, cereals, sugar, buckwheat, oil. Then they said that “humanitarian aid” would be given only to those who have a Russian pension certificate. We did not get one, so we stopped receiving food. We ate what we had stockpiled: from the canned meat – soup, borscht, that sort of thing. We cooked on a gas cylinder. Our electricity came from a generator; we had stocked up on gasoline long ago. Fuel has not been brought into the town for a long time.
Blockade bread looks different
I have been baking bread on a frying pan for half a year. I’ll tell you the recipe. Take a cup of warm water, about 200 grams, pour it into a bowl. Into that I put one and a half teaspoons of dry yeast and a teaspoon of sugar. Mix it all until the yeast melts. Then add a teaspoon of salt, then flour by eye, and finally oil. Knead it all, cover it and put it in a warm place. The dough rose for about two hours. Then you need to move it into an ordinary frying pan you use. I pressed the dough with my finger and covered it on top with a towel so it would rise a little more. Next – put it on low heat and cover it as well with a bowl. Another important thing – this bread must be turned over, because the bottom gets browned and the top stays raw. It comes out like a flatbread, only quite tall, sometimes up to 5 centimeters. And everyone in Oleshky is baking such bread now.
Men are disappearing in Oleshky
A teacher, long retired, insisted on speaking Ukrainian. Although showing principles there now is extremely dangerous. He cared for his elderly mother. One time he went to her, and after that no one saw him again. People think the occupiers took him – because of the Ukrainian language. Another man used to go to the apartment of his friends who had left to feed their dog. And once he surprised occupiers there. He asked: “What are you doing in someone else’s house?”. So they showed him what they do there… They beat him half to death; it’s a miracle they didn’t kill him. The person spent about three months recovering after that “meeting”. And about a month ago the family left for Odesa.
How people are buried in Oleshky
There have been no coffins in the town for a long time. My friend, she was 73 years old, fell ill and died. We looked for a coffin, found none anywhere; wreaths and all that funeral stuff were out of the question. So we buried her wrapped in a carpet. We took her to the cemetery on a wheelbarrow, because there are no cars in town at all. Those who had some cars had them taken by the occupiers. People die often in Oleshky. Our neighbor froze to death in the apartment he was renting; it was at the end of January. He was buried in a plastic bag, with a number on the grave. That’s how everyone is buried. No one conducts funeral rites for anyone. There are no priests in Oleshky or the nearby villages, the churches are mostly burned. The cemetery was damaged by shelling back in 2023. So there is no peace for the living or the dead.
And in general in Oleshky no one can say for sure how many people died, especially due to the blowing up of the Kakhovka HPP. I know that when people with boats hurried to rescue the population in the flooded zone, at the checkpoint the occupiers simply turned them away and themselves did not intend to evacuate anyone. There was a case when at the beginning of the flooding soldiers locked the gate of a house on people, saying “Then drown!”. There were cases when roofs collapsed and people could not get out of the house; bodies floated like that, face down.
Decision to leave
Not a minute of peace. Roaring day and night – shelling. The occupiers from Oleshky bomb Kherson, and then a response from ours arrives. So the front line is in the middle of our town. Our firewood supplies have practically run out; there is nowhere to get new wood. People cut down their fruit trees to heat themselves. So it was clear – if we stayed, there would be nothing left to heat with. My husband has diabetes, there is nowhere to get his medicine. We decided to leave back at New Year. We waited these four months, thinking they would clear the mines from the highway. Sometimes there were frosts, sometimes evacuation buses were blown up. If you could see how many burned-out cars are on the road past Oleshky toward Hopriv! On the shoulder and in the middle of the road – their buses had to barely drive around them. There were slightly fewer burned vehicles past Hladkivka, but still many. We left Oleshky in three vans that had no seats. People sat on stools or on bags. In Skadovsk we transferred to the carrier’s transport. Then the road was through Melitopol, five regions of Russia and Belarus. In Kovel volunteers picked us up, brought us into a church, and fed us lunch and dinner for free. Then they gave us tickets to Kyiv, and there our children met us.
My husband went to the fair in the capital. God, his eyes went wide – how many products and how varied! And the children had also set such a table. Ordinary salo… we hadn’t seen it for half a year, for sure. Likewise bread from a store.
There are now many abandoned, destroyed houses in Oleshky – of course. They say about 2,000 residents still live in the town, but I think it’s unlikely to add up to that many, it doesn’t seem so. But there are definitely children, we saw them. One family with school-age children left with us. Most people would like to get out of hell, but there is no way anymore. At first people left for Skadovsk by “ambulance” from the hospital, but then that became impossible. Transporters are also afraid to take the risk now because vehicles are being blown up and the roads are mined.
We don’t even think about returning. We would like to, but we’ll see. The main thing is that we saved our lives. And we send huge words of thanks to the volunteers, to all the kind people who took us out. They try, they appeal for help to many organizations, but it’s occupied territory: who needs whom? Meanwhile Saldo, the occupation governor, reports that roads are being repaired, playgrounds are being built and that everything is fine in Oleshky… But there – hell, hell on earth.
Photos provided by readers