NARRATIVE: Oleshky, the town where elders ate grass, is finally waiting for its convoy

The meal of the last ones

Grass, on the menu.

Weeds, too.

Foraged outdoors, under the drones.

The elders’ meal.

In Oleshky, this autumn.

Not in an old textbook. This year.

An occupied Ukrainian town. Kherson sits right across. The river divides them.

The Kremlin sealed it off.

No food. No medicine. Mined roads.

And drones overhead.

Over there, a meal is foraged.

Here, we order one.

That distance between two banks of the same river is the whole subject of this story.

The gesture that bothers everyone

Then an unexpected voice.

Melania Trump’s.

She obtained what months of statements had never pried loose.

A local ceasefire. One town, at first. A few days.

It’s little.

It’s huge, too.

Those who sneer at the first lady should look at what existed before her.

There was nothing.

Months of blockade, elders alone, and no public pressure had opened a single road.

The gesture bothers people because it comes from a woman many chose never to take seriously.

And a few minutes after it began, Moscow was already striking Kyiv.

Before the war

Twenty-four thousand residents.

That’s the town before.

The figure comes from the White House, which gives it as Oleshky’s population before the Russian invasion.

A small southern town.

Low houses. Small gardens.

The river at the end.

Kherson on the other bank.

Russian troops took it on the very first day of the invasion, in February 2022.

The very first day.

Since then, more than four and a half years under a flag it never chose.

Then comes Moscow’s hour.

Shells and patrols. And fear.

The young leave.

Families leave.

The old stay.

Not all by choice.

Some no longer have the legs to walk to a crossing point, let alone cross a river.

And there are those who won’t leave the house of a lifetime.

The dam, then the water

June 2023.

The Kakhovka dam gives way.

Water pours into the streets.

About 90% of the town’s territory is flooded, the White House writes.

Hundreds of residents die.

An Associated Press investigation concluded that the Russian army had very likely caused the explosion.

Very likely, the agency writes.

An already occupied town lost its streets to the water, after losing its freedom.

Occupied, then drowned, then starved.

In that order.

Three blows.

Oleshky didn’t run out of luck. It ran out of witnesses.

What no longer gets through

Moscow seals the town.

Aid stops coming in.

Food runs short. Water runs short. Electricity too.

The Kyiv Independent describes a town stripped of everything that keeps a body going.

Shops close.

Looting is reported.

A town without shops or aid soon looks like a town someone decided to forget.

The blockade lasts months, write Peter Pomerantsev and Aliide Naylor.

Whole months.

The old go out anyway.

To forage.

The elderly and the less mobile picked weeds and ate grass, the two authors write in The Kyiv Independent.

Grass, again.

Under the drones.

The sources give no name, no age, no face to those who bent down for that grass.

They remain one sentence in an opinion piece.

The road that shoots

So why not leave?

There was a road.

Barely one.

Mined, and watched from above.

Civilians fleeing by the only roads in and out were often targeted by drones.

Fleeing became a gamble.

Staying, a slow erosion.

In between, old people.

Often alone.

Moscow and Kyiv accuse each other of blocking food, Al Jazeera notes.

The blame travels.

The keys don’t.

The Russian army holds the town.

It holds the road.

It holds the bread.

When an army holds the town, the road and the bread, the word blockade becomes too soft.

The first lady’s statement

Friday, October 23.

An unusual text drops.

In it, Melania Trump announces a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.

Localized, temporary, humanitarian.

“The situation in Oleshky is dire,” she writes.

She describes Oleshky as a front-line town “on the brink of disaster,” where electricity is scarce.

Mostly elderly residents.

They need care.

Medicine. Some bread.

Clean water.

She presents herself as the “Exclusive Intermediary” between the two countries.

The title makes some smile.

The result, much less.

A grand title can cover a serious channel.

How it started

It all starts in New York.

During the 81st UN General Assembly, at her “Fostering the Future Together” event.

A private conversation.

A town named.

A file opened.

The file could have died in a UN hallway, like so many before it.

A channel already exists.

The one built by six earlier reunifications of 34 Ukrainian children, obtained by her office.

Thirty-four children returned.

That number rarely circulates.

It should.

It silences the mockers.

The channel that brought children home now serves a whole town, with its mines, its elders and its cellars.

Home visits

Three steps, no more.

Stop the fire.

Let aid in.

Let civilians leave.

That’s the order summed up by Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s ombudsman, quoted by ABC News.

Then come the visits.

Russian and Ukrainian civilian officials will go to every resident’s home.

They’ll note each person’s needs.

Door by door.

Bed by bed, probably.

Civilians, not soldiers.

That detail reassures a little.

These door-to-door visits assume both camps agree to walk the same streets at the same moment.

An American camera, promised

Those who want to leave will get transport to the destination of their choice.

“I anticipate some will want to go to Russia, and some to Ukraine,” Melania Trump writes.

An “impartial” American media organization is to follow the teams on the ground.

Which one, exactly?

The statement names none.

An anonymous witness promises little.

Especially before Russian cameras.

A reporter without a name can’t contradict anyone, in Moscow or in Kyiv.

Deminers too.

On each side.

Mines first.

Bread next.

Then the buses.

Each step depends on the previous one, and the first depends on the word of the army that sealed the town.

Before you feed a town, you clear its road.

The guns go quiet

Washington had said the 29th.

The guns stop sooner.

Tuesday, October 27.

3 a.m. in Kyiv.

4 a.m. in Moscow.

The ceasefire took effect around 3 a.m., Dmytro Lubinets confirms.

At 5:30 p.m., the truce is being “fully honored,” he adds.

Across the table, Yana Lantratova.

She leads the Russian negotiating team, and Lubinets settled the details with her.

Two ombudsmen. Two countries at war.

Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Presidential Office, speaks of a “bilateral” ceasefire.

The word matters.

Both camps fall silent.

At 11 a.m., the Kremlin reports no violations.

Two ombudsmen talking while their armies shoot at each other is already a diplomatic anomaly.

The Russian general signs on too

Valery Gerasimov had promised it.

Russia’s chief of the general staff had announced his forces “will cease fire on the Kherson axis” at 4 a.m.

They will also carry out “engineering reconnaissance” for the convoy.

The Russian Defense Ministry confirms the ceasefire on Telegram.

On the 27th, the truce extends to all of Kherson Oblast, per Lubinets’s office.

Engineering reconnaissance means, first of all, hunting for mines where the trucks will pass.

The truce is to hold until 10:59 p.m. Kyiv time on November 1, per Lubinets.

David Arakhamia confirms the date.

Nearly six days.

Six days of silence, almost.

After four years of waiting.

Days against years.

That silence rests on an order signed in Moscow, and on the promise that soldiers will follow it.

Kyiv under missiles

The ceasefire begins.

A few minutes pass.

Then a second wave launches.

They target Ukraine.

They target Kyiv.

The night’s list lands, dry.

A major bridge.

Metro stations.

A university.

Medical centers.

Two waves.

One night.

The first, around 9:45 p.m., had already hit the university and the medical centers.

Over the day, four dead in Ukraine and at least 55 wounded, the same paper reports.

Kyiv isn’t on the Kherson axis, so the truce never covered its residents.

A one-town truce, a whole-country war

Two images, then.

On one side, a town where the guns stop to let bread through.

On the other, a capital where students spent the night amid shattered glass.

Same night.

Same army.

Same command.

The Kremlin grants a pause where the cameras are watching, and strikes where they’re asleep.

It’s a method.

A local truce polishes an image abroad without giving up anything on the rest of the map.

The Kremlin offers one town a truce and keeps a whole country at war.

Four ways of counting

Nobody really knows.

The White House puts it at 1,700 to 2,000 residents.

Mostly elderly people.

About 50 children.

No census since 2022.

The White House admits as much in the same text, and Al Jazeera settles on about 2,000 remaining.

Fox News writes “a few thousand.”

On September 16, Lubinets put it at more than 6,000, surrounding area included.

Among them, about 200 children.

Four sources. Four estimates.

No one to decide.

Between 1,700 and more than 6,000 residents, the gap changes how many buses, rations and doctors are needed.

The fog that protects

That fog weighs.

A sealed town escapes the count.

It can’t be photographed.

It can’t be visited.

It can only be told by those who get out, when they get out.

The fog suits the jailer.

Fifty children.

Maybe more.

Maybe fewer.

Who counted them?

A child never counted could stay behind without anyone noticing their absence from the convoy.

Videos already prepared

The convoy is waiting.

The war of images isn’t.

Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, accuses Moscow of preparing “dozens” of staged videos.

The SBU goes further.

Ukraine’s Security Service describes a Russian unit tasked with preparing “compromising” interviews with residents.

The goal is known: make the starving say their hunger comes from Kyiv.

The script is simple.

Residents on screen.

A ready-made accusation.

“Constant shelling.”

Ukrainian, of course.

Margarita Simonyan, a Kremlin voice, has already posted her video on Telegram.

She speaks of an inferno there.

Signed Kyiv, in her telling.

The same Simonyan denied in February 2022 that Moscow would attack Ukraine.

Viktoria and her mother-in-law

A woman tells her story.

Her name is Viktoria. It’s a pseudonym.

She speaks to The Reckoning Project.

Her mother-in-law is filmed.

Soldiers behind her.

Then the camera goes off.

She’s told what to say.

Then it comes back on.

No statement mentions it.

That one detail is enough to describe what awaits Oleshky’s survivors in front of Russian lenses.

Hunger, filmed.

A voice, dictated.

Hunger makes a person vulnerable to any camera that shows up carrying a bag of groceries.

The precedent people forget

A date comes back.

April 8, 2022.

Kramatorsk station.

Civilians fleeing.

Dozens dead.

A week earlier, Moscow was talking about “human shields.”

RIA Novosti had posted about the attack three minutes before it happened.

Three minutes early.

Then Moscow blamed Kyiv.

The lie came before the missile.

The statement arrived before the debris, and that’s all you need to know about the method.

A method that returns

July 2014.

Flight MH17.

298 people on board.

Russian media blame Ukraine.

The investigation finds the Buk launcher came from Russia and went back there.

Mariupol, next.

Hospitals and a theater presented as military bases.

The pattern doesn’t change.

Strike, then accuse.

Film the victim.

Then make the victim talk.

Further back still, Katyn: about 14,700 Polish officers executed, and the blame long pinned on others.

In Oleshky, the victim is already waiting.

Starved, before the lens.

The siege may be ending, the two authors conclude, but “the assault on truth and perception is just beginning.”

A result, not a pose

It must be said plainly.

Melania Trump wanted this.

The ceasefire exists.

Lubinets himself credits the first lady’s mediation, Fox News reports.

Marc Beckman, her senior adviser, describes weeks of mediation.

Putin and Zelensky included.

Lubinets even sees a model for other humanitarian missions.

A model, he says.

From Kyiv, that’s rare.

A good move is a good move.

Admitting it costs nothing.

Those who hate Trump on reflex should read Lubinets before they sneer.

A Ukrainian ombudsman who praises the White House in the middle of a war isn’t doing it out of politeness.

The rest of the bill

But this autumn’s America also gives with the other hand.

It is buying Russian diesel.

It has lifted some sanctions.

Washington cites fuel prices, pushed up by the war against Iran.

Zelensky, at the Hudson Institute, said Patriot interceptors were still stuck.

Starshield, throttled.

Trump answered that dispute with a short line: “If there is a problem, I’ll get it straightened out.”

We take him at his word.

One hand opens Oleshky.

The other strips Kyiv bare.

Same White House.

Same week.

One Washington hand opens the town. The other leaves the sky open.

The road Moscow wants cleared

Washington promises a choice.

Russia or Ukraine.

Each person decides.

Zelensky fears something else.

Moscow will do everything to “clear the roads” toward its territory, he warns.

Toward Russia.

Not toward Kherson.

Is a choice made on a road held by the occupier still a choice?

Lantratova promises safe passage.

On one condition.

That the ceasefire is respected.

By whom, first?

The question is anything but theoretical for elders who depend on the first bus that comes.

The negotiator who doesn’t dream

No dreams for sale.

The Ukrainian negotiator warns the deal will be “extremely challenging to implement” on the ground.

Demining comes first.

Feeding comes next.

The old must be carried.

Each of these tasks takes days, teams and a silence that truly holds.

Lubinets promises the road’s mines will be removed before the first truck.

Before, not during.

Demining has already begun, his office says.

The schedule is set.

The mission is due to start on the 29th, per the occupiers.

Evacuation follows on the 30th.

Here, patience protects.

Haste explodes.

A convoy is not a peace

Tomorrow, maybe, bread.

Not grass.

That’s the progress.

No summit produced it.

It comes from a first lady and two ombudsmen who still talk to each other.

Pope Leo XIV was worried about the town.

Kyiv rallied on October 6.

Weeks of appeals, photos and prayers came before this truce, and nothing opened until the first lady stepped in.

It took all that.

For a few days of silence.

Abu Dhabi is waiting.

Talks are planned there for the first half of November, according to Al Jazeera.

Zelensky spoke with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, and he wants security guarantees.

He also wants ten years of funding for his army.

Oleshky settles none of that, but it proves an American channel can still open a door.

The town awaiting its convoy

A war that starves its elders needs no adjective.

It needs a convoy.

Then a second.

Then an open road.

And it needs witnesses who stay after the cameras leave.

The bread will finally get in. The grass will stay in memory.

Oleshky, the town where elders ate grass, is finally waiting for its convoy.

When the truce ends on November 1, who will still remember the hand that had closed the road?

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

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