Trapped in a Kill Zone, a Ukrainian City Is Begining to Starve
Evacuation is almost impossible and food is running out in Russian-occupied Oleshky, a city menaced by mines and drones. A protester in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, last month calling for help for Oleshky, a city in southern Ukraine. Credit... Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By Siobhán O’Grady, Liubov Sholudko and Yurii Shyvala Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine The New York Times Oct. 5, 2026, 5:24 a.m. ET Little news trickles out from the besieged city of Oleshky, a frontline wasteland severed by mines and drones from the rest of Russian-occupied Ukraine. But one thing is clear from what has emerged: A humanitarian calamity is unfolding. There is no food, no safety and no escape. “In the autumn, we will definitely die,” one resident wrote this summer. “I am already dying. I am getting weaker with each day.”/ “We’re cooking our last borscht,” wrote another, “with one beet, five potatoes, one onion, a zucchini, a tomato and a little barley groats to make it thicke...