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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
In the occupied Olenivka (Olešky) in the Kherson region there is hunger. In a city that has found itself under full blockade, up to 4 thousand people remain—without any food or medicines since 26 May. The head of the MVA, Tetiana Hasaneno, acknowledged that Olenivka is experiencing the hardest times in its history. Volunteers and local residents recount drone attacks on humanitarian convoys, forced slaughter of chickens, theft of produce, and suicidal moods among the local population—and, according to the head of the administration, the Russians have no intention of opening a “green corridor.” The publication HORDON tells what is known about the situation in the city.
The Hell of the Occupation
9 September, the occupied Olenivka in the Kherson region was supposed to celebrate City Day, 942 years since its founding. But the city is now experiencing the hardest times in its history, stated head of the MVA Tetiana Hasaneno in a Facebook post on Saturday morning. The city really is surviving under conditions that, in the twenty-first century, one would think should not exist. According to Hasaneno, whom she voiced to “Suspilne” 11 September, Olenivka, where more than 24 thousand people lived before the full-scale war began, now has up to 4 thousand residents, including dozens of children and disabled people.
The city was already having it rough after the onset of the occupation, 2023-th when the Russians blew up the dam, Olenivka was flooded, many people deprived by the Russian “authorities” of the opportunity to evacuate, died.
Now Olenivka is, without exaggeration, the scariest place on earth, writes Esther Vratarova, spokesperson for the organization Humaniti, whose volunteers are taking people out of Olenivka.
"There is hell of Russian occupation there. And a uniquely vile situation; I dare to assert that it is there that the Russians have created the scariest point on the map of the world. This is the great Russian culture – destroyed houses, hunger, blockade, and terror. It is impossible to leave – mines. As well as to flee. Food and medicines have not been delivered since June. Vehicles with humanitarian cargo are being shot at. People discuss eating bark and plants. In other words, this is again Holodomor," she emphasized on 12 September.
1 September – a day of lost hope
The situation began to deteriorate significantly in winter 2025 of the year, but then it was still possible to bring food and medicines to Olenivka every few weeks. Those same vehicles were taking people out, Hasanova said. However, since the beginning of summer, products and medicines have not been delivered. According to the head of the MVA, the last food delivery took place on 26 May. Even then, according to the analysis by Radio Liberty, it was known that in the city:
hunger and problems with deliveries;
terror and seizure of food (there are reports that Russian troops forcibly confiscate the last supplies of the townspeople);
lack of communications and severe shortage of drinking water (it is catastrophically lacking);
drone attacks and dense mining (mined roads leading to Olenivka, deadly to travel through the city – due to mines and the risk they pose to drones);
inability to evacuate and receive payments.
Local resident Alla Likhman-Malish, who occasionally posts on Facebook about the situation in the city (in particular, her video with a three-liter jar filled with croutons became viral in recent weeks), wrote that 1 September a convoy carrying food to the city was attacked by drones. The video of the convoy being shelled was posted by volunteer Kseniya Arkhypova, where it is visible that large inscriptions saying “people” on the vehicles did not stop the occupiers.
According to volunteers and surviving residents who managed to leave the city, people were dying of hunger and cold in Olenivka even last winter, when there was still some supplies. In the summer, according to Likhman-Malish, people survived thanks to produce: "We stretched on cucumbers and tomatoes, ate pancakes with zucchini and cutlets made from blue potatoes."
1 September a woman who cares for animals in the city blocked by Russians named the day the last hope was lost.
"Hope for food, for departure, for life, — she wrote. — For the fourth week in a row every morning people waited for trucks with food, woke up hoping they would go today. No. It was not possible to pass. The terrible news quickly spread through the city. Trucks approaching the city were shot at by drones. Who came up with that idea is unknown. What kind of person would destroy food for a city where people are waiting for it. They have waited long, because you can live without electricity and heating, but not without food."
The harvest season is ending. "People’s mood is panicked and even suicidal because there is no strength to look a child in the eye who is not finishing their meal, elderly people who still 85, the sick, the maimed — wrote the woman 2 September. — Internal reserves are exhausted; there is nothing to feed the chickens, they are going to be slaughtered. Dogs with protruding ribs, cats made to wander by the wind. Not only isolated cases of theft of garden produce. I went out of the house for errands, came back, and someone had already dug up the potatoes, pumpkins disappeared."
According to her, people simply faced the choice: death from hunger or from a mine or a drone. And some went to the convoy that drones had broken. There were still some products there – and people gathered them.
"Food on one scale of the balance, a mined road of length 7 km on the other. The bold ones appeared; not many, some managed to grab. They even gathered baked potatoes, a little onion and rain-soaked flatbreads. Hunger is not a joke. People, driven to despair, intend to walk out. How far will they get? A rhetorical question, though it makes one cry," the woman wrote in despair on 8 September.
Money is worth nothing anymore
People feel themselves doomed, Hasaneno emphasizes. At the beginning of August, Likhman-Malish spoke about the assortment and prices of goods at the local market: vegetables, greens, watermelon – and margarine (from a local dairy plant’s stock).
"Someone will say that they wouldn’t even eat that. I’ll answer — you don’t even have an idea of what you would eat when there is nothing to eat. People bake cookies on it, because there is nothing else, of course if there is flour. Products like groats, potatoes, flour, tea, coffee – only for exchange, not sold for money. Sugar – 1000 rubles per kg (529 hryvnias per kg — “HORDON”). By the way a tablet of Citramon costs the same," she said. "Who created this artificial experiment will probably learn by our grandchildren. Because only 4 km from us there is life with food, but there is no physical ability to leave the city."
Now, according to the head of the MVA, money is no longer worth anything in Olenivka: "No matter how much money you have, no one sells anything."
As Hasaneko says, people hardly move around the city because of constant drone attacks. The bodies of the dead remain unburied for a long time because there is no one to bury them, and because of the threat of drones. Moreover, Russians can punish for burying the dead from shelling – they demand to take such bodies to Kalanchak "to certify the crimes of the Ukrainian army," the official says.
Why and what to do?
The first question, evidently, is rhetorical. Ukraine’s MFA 7 May announced a humanitarian catastrophe in Olenivka, Holoi priostani, as well as Stari Zbur'ivtsi and Nova Zbur'ivtsi – and called on the international community to respond. Kyiv appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross to organize the evacuation of civilians from there. The Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinec, said in June that he spoke with Russian ombudswoman Lantratova about evacuating people from Olenivka. According to him, there are about 200 children who need urgent evacuation. Lubinenets is confident – people can be evacuated, even at the beginning of summer everything depended on the Russians’ stance on ensuring a ceasefire for the evacuation.
"I personally turned to international organizations and intermediaries in February, and in March I officially wrote a letter to the ICRC about conducting urgent evacuation; they officially replied that they are ready to provide all the technical necessary assistance. The only thing is that Ukraine must agree with the Russian Federation on establishing a ceasefire for at least one day," he said.
The head of the occupation administration of the region, Volodymyr Saldo, at the end of May denied the existence of a humanitarian crisis in Olenivka, calling reports of it "hypocrisy." He also rejected Ukraine’s proposals for a ceasefire to evacuate civilians and accused Ukrainian troops of creating difficult living conditions for the population. The aggressor country, he claimed, was "providing" the city with essential goods. On 20 June, Russia’s MFA representative Rodion Miroshnik admitted in a conversation with TASS propagandists that Olenivka’s humanitarian catastrophe – only shifted the blame to Ukraine and the West.
In Hasaneno’s view, the Russians do not intend to agree to a "green corridor" for evacuating Olenivka residents.
"They are simply using people as human shields. I think no one intends to allow them to leave. We are not talking about bringing people to Ukraine. But they could be evacuated to Skadovsk, to the temporarily occupied Crimea, but not left to die just", she explained.
As Likhman-Malish wrote, Olenivka is a city that "cries out for help, but no one hears."
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item ""За 4 км від нас — життя з їжею". Чому люди в Олешках голодують місяцями". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Gordon.
