Famine threatens the Ukrainian town of Oleshky in the southern Kherson region as Russia delays creating a humanitarian evacuation corridor

A man sends a photo of "Oleshky borscht," a vegetable soup he has made from leftovers. To make the soup more filling, he said he has added millet and two eggs.

"Today, we have a delicacy in our borscht. My mother traded 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds) of sugar for 10 eggs," he told the recipient of the photo, Tetiana Hasanenko, the head of the Oleshky City Military Administration, which is based in territory controlled by Kyiv. "There's no cabbage in it, but there is asparagus."

Hasanenko said she's used to getting such messages. "I receive reports like this every day," Hasanenko told DW. "People want to be given some kind of hope, but there is no hope." She said food was last delivered to the town at the end of May. "The situation is critical ," she said, warning that "you can't just call this starvation — it's a famine ."

Oleshky is located in Ukraine's southern Kherson region on the left bank of the Dnipro River. The city has been occupied since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

In June 2023, the town was almost completely flooded after a blast at the Kakhovka Power Plant and the breach of the Kakhovka Dam .

Hasanenko said the situation worsened last winter. She said there were about 6,000 people left in the area, including 180 children. They have already become accustomed to living without electricity and gas and have to fetch water from wells. Now, they have to prepare for another harsh winter.

本文の著作権はDeutsche Welleにあります。