Residents leave Russian-held town by bus

Melania-brokered truce holds in city

KYIV:

Starving and exhausted residents of a Russian-held town in southern Ukraine were evacuated by bus on Friday as part of a joint relief operation by the opposing sides, the first of its kind in four years and eight months of war.

Under a local ceasefire brokered by US first lady Melania Trump, an aid convoy arrived in the town of Oleshky to distribute food and medicine.

Those wishing to leave - some for Russia, some for Ukraine - were taken initially to Russian-annexed Crimea in 25 buses and nine ambulances, Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova said, before splitting into separate convoys.

Senior Ukrainian lawmaker David Arakhamia said those heading for Ukraine would be taken from there to Anapa in southern Russia before flying to Belarus and finally crossing back into Ukraine by bus - a route of more than 1,000 miles.

Although it was a striking example of cooperation between the warring sides, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin described it as "difficult to extrapolate" to the wider search for peace.

Attacks continued elsewhere, with Russian strikes overnight targeting seven regions of Ukraine, the capital Kyiv and the southeastern city of Dnipro, officials said. On Thursday, a Russian drone killed at least 15 people on a rail platform in Dnipro.

Russia said Ukraine had resumed strikes on its oil refineries despite a request from US President Donald Trump to stop such attacks, which Trump has blamed for raising the cost of diesel before midterm legislative elections next week. There was no comment from Ukraine.

It was not clear how many people had chosen to stay behind in Oleshky, which has suffered extensive war damage and was badly flooded after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam upstream from the town in 2023.