By Sumayya
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — A local pause in fighting between Ukraine and Russia started early Tuesday. This happened before a humanitarian aid mission led by U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, even as missile attacks started again in Kyiv.
The stop in fighting began at 3 a.m. in Ukraine to allow a help mission into the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in southern Ukraine later this week.
According to her office, Melania Trump led talks with civilian negotiators from Russia and Ukraine. She did this after meeting with United Nations officials who explained the situation in the town to her.
The aid mission is planned ahead of a new round of peace talks set up by the United States between Russia and Ukraine. Those talks are expected next month and aim to end the war after more than four and a half years of fighting.
Up to 2,000 people are trapped in Oleshky with shrinking supplies of food and medicine. They have been unable to leave because of hidden explosive mines and drone attacks in the area, according to the UN.
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators confirmed in separate statements that the pause in fighting had begun.
The stop in fighting is supposed to last through Saturday, or longer, despite deep mistrust between Russia and Ukraine that has ruined earlier attempts at pauses in fighting.
Minutes after 3 a.m., several ballistic missile explosions shook Kyiv as air sirens sounded in multiple parts of the country. Late Monday, the capital city also came under attack when Russian ballistic missiles damaged the grounds of a university in Kyiv, causing several injuries.
“It is important that the world sees that Russia is showing nothing but a desire to kill and continue waging war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in an internet post shortly afterward.
Oleshky is in the partially occupied Kherson region, about 550 kilometres (340 miles) southeast of Kyiv, where the Dnipro River separates Russian and Ukrainian armies.
It was captured by Moscow’s forces on the very first day of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. More disaster hit in June 2023 when floodwaters covered the town because a dam collapsed.
Oleshky sits across the Dnipro River from the city of Kherson, which is the main capital city of the region. Russian forces captured Kherson in the early parts of the 2022 invasion but moved back across the river several months later.
Negotiators working on the help mission said doctors, medicines, food supplies, and water would be taken into Oleshky before safe paths are opened for people to leave.
