“We’ll die this autumn.”

Oleshky is not a person; it is a city of about 6,000 people (of the original 24,000) in the Russian-occupied Kherson region of Ukraine, consisting of the men, women and children who have been unable to leave since the 2022 invasion and are now trapped by the occupying forces with little or no access to food, water, electricity, or medical care.

Last week I added The 6,000 Starving Citizens of Oleshky to my list of known hostages under Vladimir Putin’s barbaric regime. And the situation has only become more dire since then. One citizen wrote to the city’s relocated Ukrainian administration that, with just one remaining beetroot, five potatoes, an onion, a zucchini, a tomato, and a little barley:

“We are preparing our last borshch. We eat once a day. We’ll die this autumn for sure. I’m dying already, weakening with each day.” [Mykyta Peretiatko and RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, October 3, 2026.]

Ukrainian forces have sent heavy-lift drones to deliver food and other supplies to the city. But Russia regularly shoots down as many of the drones as possible, and further targets the people directly as they gather at distribution sites in hopes of receiving aid.

The Ukrainian civic organization Humanity has reportedly rescued more than 7,000 people from Russian-occupied areas. But for those remaining in Oleshky, with their “homes destroyed, property wiped out,” documents lost, and little chance of obtaining legal status in Russia, they are trapped by the Russian blockade and literally starving to death. According to a spokesperson for Humanity:

“The hunger has reached such a scale that, in the best-case scenario, a person can eat a clear soup and a few spoons of some kind of porridge in a day. If they have any left. They have been left completely without food, without medicine, without access to medical assistance, without fire engines, and, of course, without money.” [Id.]

She added that the residents with whom she spoke expect their food supplies to run out in October. That’s this month.

There are no adjectives adequate to describe the hell that Vladimir Putin has created for the innocent people of Ukraine. And even harder to tolerate is the realization that, while the indescribable suffering he has created drags on, he and Donald Trump have been in discussions to further enrich themselves, their friends and relatives with an oil deal . . .

But that is a topic for my next post. Please stay tuned.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/5/26