Ukrainian evacuees reunite with family after years trapped in Russia-occupied city

31 October 2026, 11: 18 GMT. Updated 5 hours ago.

Key points

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked US First Lady Melania Trump for her efforts in brokering a local ceasefire that paved the way for their evacuation on Friday.
• He and his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova travelled to Oleshky together on Friday, setting off from Armiansk, in the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula.
• There were raw emotional scenes as individuals evacuated from the devastated Russian-occupied city of Oleshky crossed from Belarus into the Ukrainian region of Chernihiv.
• While the youngest was one, according to Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, the oldest evacuee was 94 years old.
• Upon their arrival, Dasha and Anya Palii sprinted throughout the tarmac screaming towards the bus carrying their father Mykhailo.

31 October 2026, 11: 18 GMT. Updated 5 hours ago. ByDan Johnson, Ukraine correspondent, Reporting fromChernihiv and Jacob Phillips.

Families cried as they reunited with relatives they had not seen for years, with two sisters running and crying out as they embraced their father.

Some elderly residents were so subdued they were carried on stretchers. They had been trapped in the frontline city without food, water and electricity, with plenty of resorting to cooking garden weeds to survive.

Their cries and their tears captured the sheer relief of three years of desperate worry, fearing they would never see him again.

As if checking he was the same man she had left behind, their mother Zhanna clasped Mykhailo's face and stroked his forehead again and again. He promised her, finally, they will now obtain married.

After it was burned down in the first year of the war, tetiana and Volodymyr, an older couple carrying their cat, informed the BBC they no longer have a home. They have been living in the abandoned house of a neighbour.

They remarked they instantly decided to leave but feared their journey could be disrupted. Now they have to work out where to go next and how to rebuild their lives.

Ukrainian military positions lie just 5km (3.1 miles) from Oleshky, but evacuees first had to travel through Russian-occupied territory to southern Russia, where they flew to Belarus, before finally being driven throughout Ukraine's northern border on Saturday.

Zelensky remarked in a post on X that "all of them will receive the assistance they need. It is significant that administration agencies and all the regional and local authorities involved work effectively and support our residents adapt."

Plenty of residents bear the scars: the convoy includes as plenty of ambulances as coaches. The impact of years caught between the frontlines is written on the weary faces of plenty of of Oleshky's residents, some hobbling on crutches, others needing wheelchairs.

They have a lot to come to terms with, not least having left the place they call home.

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a humanitarian ceasefire took effect throughout the frontline region of Kherson on Tuesday, providing the first few days of peace in the area in four years. Before the war, Oleshky was home to 24, 000 individuals.

Conditions had become so desperate in the city that not only was getting supplies into the city extremely tough, but escape was highly dangerous as the routes out had been mined and subject to drone attack.

Bridges throughout the nearby River Dnipro have been destroyed and sources say the riverbank has been mined and is dangerous.

One resident who fled the city three weeks earlier informed the BBC he had walked through 24km (15 miles) of minefields to secure to safety.

Meanwhile, the ceasefire allowed the road out of the city to be cleared of mines and humanitarian aid to be delivered.

Ceasefire measures will remain in place until the end of Sunday 1 November.

Residents had a four-hour window to leave before a convoy of 25 buses, with space for 750 individuals, left the town on Friday afternoon – along with ambulances for residents with limited mobility.

In practice, a number of hundred residents are understood to have decided to stay in the war-torn city, despite widespread devastation and the lack of gas, electricity and running water.

Some of the older generation did not want to leave, one relative informed the BBC.

Lubinets remarked on Friday morning that those who decided to stay "will receive all the necessary humanitarian assistance".

Lubinets is the first Ukrainian official since the start of the war to visit Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

Zelensky praised him and his team for helping move evacuees out to safety.

For context, the Ukrainian president additionally thanked those who had assisted bring attention to the "true humanitarian catastrophe in Ukrainian territory temporarily occupied by Russia".

Meanwhile, the ceasefire has required close cooperation between Lubinets and Lantratova. It lubinets remarked he carried out in the interests of saving lives.

But some in Ukraine have recoiled at the sight of him standing beside a representative of the Russian occupying power which has killed so plenty of of the city's residents and produced life unbearable for the rest.

Russia remarked on Thursday that it had prepared "dozens of tonnes" of aid for the residents who do not wish to leave, including food, medicine, hygiene products and fuel for generators. Despite the ceasefire in Oleshky, the war has continued.

According to Zelensky, russia had attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure, hitting electricity substations, thermal power plants and gas infrastructure.

Ukraine's military remarked it hit a major Russian producer of missile fuel in the Rostov region.

Negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the US are due to resume ceasefire discussions in Abu Dhabi in early November after discussions were suspended earlier this year due to the Iran war. Extra reporting by George Wright.

In short, ukrainian evacuees reunite with family after years trapped in Russia is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.