Ukraine hopes Oleshky cease-fire can serve as model for wider truce

The ceasefire began at 3 a.m. Kyiv time on October 27 and ended late on November 1, and was the longest such arrangement since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Lubinets said. After the ceasefire took effect, Russian forces began demining roads leading to Oleshky, a process that continued through October 29. Humanitarian supplies including food, medicine, drinking water and specialized hospital equipment were then delivered. Lubinets and his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova, accompanied by their teams and journalists from Ukraine, the US and Russia, entered the occupied city to oversee aid distribution and assist residents seeking evacuation.

Residents were given three options: remain in Oleshky and receive humanitarian assistance, leave for Ukrainian-controlled territory, or travel to Russia or territory under Russian control. “All people who wanted to be evacuated from Oleshky to Ukraine are now in Ukraine,” Lubinets said. He said he had personally overseen the evacuation process and spoken with residents to establish whether their decisions were voluntary. Some chose to remain despite the lack of electricity and heating, while others initially stayed because they doubted the humanitarian mission would succeed. Lubinets said his office had since received additional requests from residents seeking evacuation and expressed hope that another operation could be organized.

Arakhamia said the Ukrainian delegation was considering extending the approach to other difficult areas, although he declined to identify potential locations, saying publicizing them could jeopardize negotiations with Moscow. He said the two sides were also considering keeping humanitarian negotiations separate from the broader political process, so that disagreements over a peace settlement would not derail efforts to help civilians.

Beyond its immediate humanitarian impact, Arakhamia said the Oleshky initiative offered a real-world test of truce-monitoring arrangements previously developed during earlier rounds of trilateral negotiations involving Ukraine, Russia and the US. The operation allowed the sides to test some of those principles on a smaller scale, including the use of drones to monitor the area and verify potential violations. “One thing is doing a theoretical exercise, another thing is seeing in practice how it’s going to work on a smaller scale,” Arakhamia said. Lubinets said the operation was particularly significant because he was the first Ukrainian official since 2022 to enter Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory as part of an official humanitarian mission.

The Ukrainian delegation seeks to use the lessons from Oleshky in the next round of negotiations in Abu Dhabi, scheduled for next week. Arakhamia also said Kyiv would favor involving European representatives in future monitoring arrangements, arguing that Europe should have a central role in any postwar security architecture.

Addressing President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev at the White House on November 5, Arakhamia said the Ukrainian side had not expected or requested a meeting with Trump as part of the Oleshky mission and regarded the encounter with Dmitriev as a separate diplomatic track. He said Washington had generally kept Kyiv informed when discussions with European or Russian representatives touched on Ukrainian issues.

Asked about references to the return of both Ukrainian and Russian children, Lubinets said Ukraine had never prevented Russian citizens, including children, from leaving Ukrainian territory. He said Kyiv welcomed Melania Trump's assistance in bringing Ukrainian children back from Russia but questioned the use of language suggesting that Ukrainian and Russian children were being returned under equivalent circumstances.

Arakhamia warned that the wider war was intensifying and that Ukraine faced a particularly difficult winter. He said repeated Russian attacks on electricity infrastructure threatened not only power supplies but also water and sewage systems, raising the risk of public-health emergencies. He described the diplomatic effort as urgent, saying Ukraine was prepared to pursue further rounds of negotiations in Abu Dhabi in the hope of securing some form of de-escalation. Lubinets recounted receiving a message from a woman whose seriously ill mother remained trapped in Oleshky and had been told she might have only weeks to live. Lubinets said the mother was evacuated to Kyiv, where she is now receiving hospital treatment and has been reunited with her daughter for the first time since 2022. “For this meeting, we have to do everything,” he said. “We need to negotiate with the Russian side. We need to do everything to save our people.”

The Ukrainian delegation rejected suggestions that the ceasefire had been used by Russia as a cover for major military movements. Lubinets said military vehicles seen in footage from the period were part of the agreed demining operation and had been marked with Red Cross insignia and yellow identification markings. Arakhamia added it was possible some repositioning had occurred on a limited scale but said there was no indication that it had significantly undermined Ukrainian military positions.