Daughter shares story of mother's harrowing escape from occupied Oleshky

According to Natalia, her mother originally refused to leave Oleshky when the full-scale invasion began because she was caring for stray animals, eventually taking in nearly 30 abandoned dogs and cats.

“In recent months, she worried more about what they were eating than about herself,” Natalia wrote. “But dogs and cats started disappearing right from the yard because people have nothing to eat.”

During the occupation, the woman lost three homes but miraculously survived each time: her own apartment was destroyed by shelling, her husband’s house was flooded after the Kakhovka dam explosion, and her final refuge – her grandmother’s house – was obliterated by a Russian drone while she was inside just a week and a half before she fled.

The woman finally decided to leave the occupied territory, walking more than 20 kilometers along mine-riddled roads while evading Russian drone attacks before spending a week navigating various escape routes to reach Kyiv.

“But months of starvation – everything written about people’s survival in Oleshky is true, without exaggeration – forced her to choose: fear or life,” Natalia wrote. “She chose life and took the risk.”

Humanitarian disaster in Oleshky

German newspaper Bild reported on September 16 that Oleshky was under a humanitarian blockade. Residents said they had survived the summer on vegetables from their gardens, but with the season ending, they now face the threat of starvation.

Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on September 16 that Russia had for a long time failed to confirm its readiness to evacuate civilians from Oleshky, despite previous agreements and established procedures for the mission.

The city military administration said food was last delivered to the Russian-occupied city on May 26. There have been cases in which residents had to eat dogs.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on September 20 that Ukraine would raise the situation in Oleshky and other occupied communities in Kherson Oblast at the U.N. General Assembly.

Sybiha called on international organizations to mobilize resources to deliver aid to Oleshky on September 26.

Reports emerged on September 29 that Ukrainian forces had delivered 4,000 kilograms of food to residents of occupied Oleshky using drones, dropping supplies at 100 different locations across the city.

The European Union condemned the humanitarian situation in Russian-occupied Oleshky as unacceptable on September 29, demanding that Moscow allow immediate, unhindered access for international aid to reach the civilian population.