A localised ceasefire began early Tuesday morning in a devastated southern Ukrainian city invaded by Russian forces ahead of a planned humanitarian relief mission, the White House said.
The agreement to pause fighting for humanitarian reasons was first brokered by U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, as Breitbart News reported.
The truce started at 3 a.m. to allow an aid mission into the occupied city of Oleshky.
Food and medical supplies are running perilously low across the beseiged area where drones and land mines restrict movement for the up to 2,000 people still there, AP reports.
Oleshky was seized by Russia during the first days of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Trapped between Ukrainian positions across the Dnipro River and Russian forces to the east, starving residents have recently resorted to eating garden weeds to survive.
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators and their militaries confirmed in separate statements that the Oleshky ceasefire had begun.
Members of the Ukrainian diaspora stand in front the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw on October 6, 2026, as they demand international intervention to create a humanitarian corridor for the citizens of Oleshky, a town in Ukraine under siege by the Russians. (Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP via Getty)
The ceasefire as brokered is designed to, “temporarily stop all military action in Oleshky to allow for humanitarian aid to enter and to prepare a civilian evacuation through a designated safe passageway.”
The original announcement followed a direct plea for a ceasefire that Pope Leo XIV made to to Russian President Vladimir Putin a week earlier.
Also on Tuesday, NBC News reports Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with the leaders of Norway and Finland about ending the war in Ukraine — a rare instance of direct talks between the Russian leader and European leaders, whom the Kremlin has accused of prolonging the conflict by supporting Kyiv.
More to come…
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