‘If this works, it will be the first real ceasefire across a large stretch of the front’: Russia and Ukraine maintain truce in occupied Oleshky for more than two days
‘If this works, it will be the first real ceasefire across a large stretch of the front’: Russia and Ukraine maintain truce in occupied Oleshky for more than two days
Russia and Ukraine have halted hostilities around the occupied city of Oleshky since October 27. The Verkhovna Rada’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, confirmed on the morning of October 29 that the ceasefire had held for more than two days. Russia’s human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, said humanitarian aid — “food, fuel, medicine, and hygiene products” — had been sent to Oleshky.
Lubinets and Lantratova set out for Oleshky on the afternoon of October 29. Lubinets will be the first Ukrainian official of such rank to visit Russian-occupied territories. Both commissioners said their main task is to deliver humanitarian aid to residents and ensure the safe evacuation of those who want to leave.
Sources who spoke to the Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda and were involved in organizing the ceasefire said the ceasefire around Oleshky is meant to test whether Ukrainian and Russian military commanders can carry out political agreements to end hostilities.
Organizing a halt to the fighting turned out to be “an extremely difficult task,” according to the outlet’s sources. A political order to cease fire does not by itself guarantee automatic compliance on the front line, a source in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration told Ukrainska Pravda. Even Ukrainian troops demanded guarantees several times that if they stopped, “nothing bad would happen afterward,” the source said. The source explained:
We want to get the military — both our General Staff and the Russian one — used to the idea that if the political leadership has decided that in a given sector of the front we stop, freeze in place, and no one opens fire, the military can make that happen. They can guarantee it. Not a situation where the political leadership has reached an agreement and the military says, “Sorry, we can’t stop, we’ve got something going on.”
It is easier for the Russian side than for the Ukrainian side to organize and maintain a ceasefire, according to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources. “They [the Russians] have a rigid military vertical. We have a decentralized army. And someone — some well-known military blogger — could stir up the mood on air so much that everything falls apart afterward,” a source said.
If the ceasefire in Oleshky can be maintained, as planned, until the evening of November 1, the Ukrainian side expects to repeat this kind of local ceasefire later along other parts of the front. “That’s precisely so the military can learn how to do this: stop, ensure safe passage, and so on. So that later, if there’s some major agreement, we could implement it right away,” a source who spoke to Ukrainska Pravda said.
If this works, this will be the first example of a real ceasefire across a fairly large stretch of the front. It’s come at such a cost — the military, Russia’s Federal Security Service, and everyone else are doing nothing but trying to sabotage it. But we believe it will work out and that this will set a precedent.
The war in photographs
Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that it had begun clearing mines from roads leading into Oleshky and published photos and video of sappers at work. Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at a plenary session of the Russia–Africa summit underway in Moscow, claimed it was Ukraine that had mined the approaches to Oleshky, creating “practically a humanitarian catastrophe.”
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