Ukrainian armed forces are using drones to deliver food and medicine to the Russian-occupied town of Oleshki, Kherson region governor Oleksandr Prokudin said, as quoted by Reuters.
Prokudin said yesterday that in the latest operation, heavy-lift drones delivered about four tons of food and medical supplies simultaneously to 100 locations in the town.
Oleski is located on the front line along the Dnieper River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces. It has been occupied by the Russians since 2022.
Prokudin said nearly 2,000 people, including about 50 children, are being held as “hostages” without food, electricity and water and accused Moscow's forces of preventing them from escaping the town.
Ukrainian officials have warned that the situation in Oleshki is deteriorating.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said that residents of the town have suffered for months from food shortages and "extremely limited" access to basic necessities.
Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubynets told Ukrainian media this month that Russia had not accepted a Ukrainian offer to allow civilians to evacuate Oleshki.
“People in temporarily occupied Oleshki are deprived of basic survival tools. "Russia bears full responsibility for this humanitarian catastrophe and its consequences," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said yesterday.
The Kremlin said last week that there were serious problems with the supply of food and medical supplies in Oleshki, but the Russian armed forces were working to resolve them.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian border guard posted a video on Facebook showing its officers liberating the village of Karpivka in the Donetsk region, in the direction of Liman, Ukrinform reported.
„In the direction of Liman, we are liberating Ukrainian villages from the occupiers. Side by side with the Third Assault Brigade, officers of the "Silver Three" unit pushed the enemy out of Ukrainian settlements as part of Operation Vivaldi, the article says.
Earlier, the Third Army Corps said that the settlements of Nove, Redkodub and Katerynovka had been liberated and that control over Karpivka and Novomykhailivka had been restored, Ukrinform recalls. As part of the offensive operations, the corps recaptured 176 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory.