How Ukrainian marines bypassed Russian lines to feed starving civilians in Oleshky

Here, Ukrainian marines just launched a daring operation into the besieged town of Oleshky, on the Russian-controlled side of the Dnipro River. Ukrainian civilians in the town have been under tight Russian control since the full-scale invasion, and recently the situation became critical enough to warrant a massive rescue mission. Heavy bomber drones flew into the Russian-controlled town, delivering dozens of heavy crates full of food, water, medicine, and hygiene supplies to the Ukrainian residents. Smaller Ukrainian FPV drones were also deployed, hoping to carry as much humanitarian aid to the starving civilians as possible. Coordinating with local leaders who have stepped up to care for others, the Marines delivered an undisclosed amount of assistance solely through unmanned aerial systems.

This happened in the Ukrainian town of Oleshky, where six thousand Ukrainian residents have been under Russian control since the start of the full-scale invasion. After Ukrainians liberated the city of Kherson in November of two-thousand-twenty-two, Russians began intense shelling and targeting of civilians inside it, an operation that Russian soldiers colloquially call their human safari. Partially with the goal of eliminating Russian snipers firing into the city, Ukrainians established control of the riverbank town of Dachi in two-thousand-twenty-three, and have held it against Russian assaults ever since. However, Russian drone operators stationed inside Oleshky continued to launch attacks against the city of Kherson. To prevent Ukrainians from annihilating the Russian soldiers stationed here, Russians have strictly cordoned off the town and prevented any residents from leaving, essentially using them as human shields.

With entrance and exit to the town being blocked by Russian soldiers, drones, and minefields, a massive humanitarian crisis has ensued. Residents are unable to gain access to necessities and have been living as human shields ever since, surviving on whatever they can find. That is why Ukrainian forces stationed across the river organized this operation to drop many supplies into Oleshky. While the likelihood that Russian soldiers will try to steal back the supplies for themselves is high, alleviating the crisis for as many civilians as possible has taken clear priority.

It is also important to note that Ukrainians frequently attempt to organize humanitarian corridors and ceasefires to allow residents to leave Oleshky with the help of the international Red Cross. Unfortunately, Russia has repeatedly refused and reneged on agreements regarding the evacuations, frequently canceling them in the final stages without explaining why. Regardless, many Ukrainian volunteers operating from inside the free Ukrainian territory as well as Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory consistently help residents evacuate and find refuge further in the rear.

Overall, Ukrainian marines conducted a daring operation to deliver as many essential supplies as they could to the besieged civilians inside Oleshky. The operation was not without risk to the marines, as such a large-scale deployment of unmanned systems causes Russians to begin searching for the Ukrainian operators immediately. Nevertheless, the operation has been a success and has temporarily alleviated the situation for those who were in the direst need. With Russians continuing to hold up agreements on a safe evacuation corridor for civilian residents, the humanitarian crisis in Oleshky is one of the most intense seen in the war thus far.

VIDEO

Drone footage tells the story of occupied Oleshky in Ukraine | The Insiders
Sky News
9.38M subscribers
10-24-2026 5:30 A.M.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1qMJAic2eI

Sky’s Stuart Ramsay tells Michael Clarke how his team were able to gain access to drone footage from the occupied city of Oleshky in Ukraine, where residents have had to resort to foraging for nuts and berries, as a result of the war.

TRANSCRIPT:

...been a war correspondent in many parts of the world.
This must have been one of the more sensitive assignments you’ve been on because as you said, you had you had to get the trust of these people.

You weren’t just going there for a bit of dramatic footage and then clearing off again. You were going there to make them understand what it was you wanted. That was it’s it’s a bit of a different different sort of assignment in a way. I know you’re very good at this, but this must have been quite a sensitive one for you as a war correspondent.

Yeah, it is. And I think that the the soldiers um it takes a little while to get across to them what we’re trying to
do, which is is not a military story per se. It’s a human story and the perspective of what it is like for people to be inside a city we can’t get to. You know, our normal way of working is to try to get to these very difficult places and and and survive as best we can along with the local population to talk to them and get a sense of what it’s like.

But when it’s completely cut off like this, it was
something of a challenge um for us to work out how we could do this to show what people are are really feeling. And as I say, you can do that by talking to people, but you could also do it with pictures of them because you can’t hide the fact that Oleshky is a completely destroyed uh city.

You can’t you... you can illustrate people looking for nuts and berries um waiting for air drops to come and and and give them some meager amounts of food that can come in a 20 kilo cardboard box. That’s the best they can hope for at any given given drop. So it it was something that once we got it across to the to the soldiers that this was we were trying to do that we wanted to talk to them about their their warfare, their war capabilities.

We wanted to talk to them about their drones, but we wanted us to show them to show us what it’s like in the city. And they did that using their drone. So, you can see, for example, in my story, they circled the hospital. Now, the hospital has got over 30 bodies in it in its morg. The RUSSIANS haven’t allowed it to leave. There’s a handful of of workers there, doctor, medics, and they are doing their best with virtually no medicine to help the local community.

Now, we can’t get right inside the hospital, but you can see it and nobody had seen that properly before. Lots of the things that we were able to show with the help of these pictures from the drones were we’ve read about them. We’ve heard people talking about what’s going on, but this is actually the first time you could properly see this is what they’re talking about and this is what the city is like.

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