SPECIAL REPORT: Oleshky eats its weeds, and the Russian occupier has left it without a convoy since May 26

Tomatoes and honey

The summer of the gardens

The residents of Oleshky, a town occupied by the Russian army since February 24, 2022, lived this summer on vegetables from their gardens, and those reserves are now gone, according to accounts gathered by the BBC.

A vegetable patch. Rows of tomatoes. A few potato plants. A wooden fence, a watering can, the soil of the Dnipro’s left bank.

That is the postcard. It held all summer.

One resident, speaking to the BBC under an assumed name, describes her only meal. Plain bread. Sometimes a tomato, or a little honey. Tea.

“I eat once a day, a dinner only,” she says.

Once. In the evening. No more.

The garden as the unit

This report is measured by the garden. What it gave in July. What it gives at the end of September.

Because once the vegetables run out, the BBC reports, many residents start cooking the weeds from their gardens.

The same patch of earth. A different harvest.

Summer feeds a garden, not a town that has been sealed off.

Less than 4 km from Kherson

The left bank

Oleshky sits on the east bank of the Dnipro, less than four kilometers from Kherson, the Kyiv Independent writes. Kherson has been liberated. Oleshky has not.

The river is the front line. On one side, the Ukrainian army. On the other, the Russian forces occupying the town.

Before the full-scale invasion, Oleshky had about 24,000 residents, according to the BBC.

How many remain

How many remain today? The figures differ. The Kherson military administration speaks of about 2,000 civilians, including nearly 50 children. The Ukrainian government, cited by the BBC and CBC, estimates that about 6,000 people remain in the town and its surroundings, including some 200 children.

The difference may come down to the boundaries used. It changes nothing else.

Oleshky’s last store closed in January 2026, according to the UN human rights mission in Ukraine. The nearest place to find food is Radensk, 23 km away, according to the BBC.

Twenty-three kilometers on foot, there and back, on mined roads.

There is no store anymore. There is no power anymore. There is no running water anymore. There is no gas anymore.

What is left is the garden.

So close to Kherson, so far from a store.

May 26, the last truck

What the UN noted in June

On June 25, 2026, the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine published its findings on Oleshky and Hola Prystan.

No food deliveries since May 26. Ambulances that no longer make house calls. Wounded people who cannot be evacuated.

Since the start of 2026, the mission writes, at least 29 civilians have lost their lives there and 54 have been injured. Short-range drones are the leading cause of death. Mines are the second.

The attempts that followed

On June 2, a humanitarian convoy hit a mine, according to the UN. One dead, three injured.

On September 1, another attempt to bring in supplies was cut short by a Russian drone attack, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Over several months, only about 180 people managed to leave, through informal arrangements, according to the UN. Four hospitalized wounded were waiting for evacuation to Skadovsk.

One hundred and eighty. Out of thousands.

After May 26, nothing more came in by road. Four months.

Since May 26, nothing has come in by road.

Moscow has admitted the shortage

A critical situation

The Kremlin does not deny it. According to the BBC, it acknowledged last week that Oleshky faced “a critical situation,” with problems supplying food and medicine.

The Russian army is working to resolve them, it added. And it blamed Kyiv.

Four months without a truck. A shortage admitted. A fix announced. And not one convoy.

And yet the roads of the left bank are under the Russian army’s control.

The occupying power

On September 25, in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, said he was alarmed. Civilians, children among them, are trapped without enough food, without medicine, without running water or electricity. They face a high risk of dying, according to the information he cites.

He recalls a rule. Under international humanitarian law, Russia, as the occupying power, has a duty to provide food and care, and to facilitate aid.

So we take a side. We stand with the people of Oleshky. Against the Russian occupier’s decision to leave the town without a convoy and without a corridor. Because since May 26, no food has come in by road, and the law names Moscow as the one who must feed them.

Moscow acknowledges the hunger and keeps the key.

Four tons, a hundred drop points

Saturday, September 26

On Saturday, September 26, Ukrainian drones took off from the right bank, in waves, according to CBC.

The next day, the Kherson military administration published the results. About 4,000 kilos of food, dropped at 100 points across the town.

Boxes of food. Cooking oil. A hundred boxes for a hundred points, according to a CBC photo caption.

Six units for one parcel

The administration lists the units involved. The 30th Marine Corps. The Hrim tactical group. The 34th Marine Brigade. The 11th National Guard Brigade. The 34th National Guard Regiment. The 79th Border Guard Detachment.

The operation had been prepared for weeks, according to officials cited by CBC. Before launching the drones, Ukrainian forces tried to clear the neighborhoods of Russian positions and drones.

Drone deliveries have been taking place since March, the administration says. Never on this scale.

A box. A point on the map. Hands waiting below.

A hundred drop points, and the sky for the only road.

What four tons weigh

Two kilos per person

The math has to be done, even if it makes our own camp uncomfortable.

Four thousand kilos for 2,000 people is two kilos each. For 6,000, it is less than 700 grams.

Two kilos is a bag you carry in one hand. Two kilos is a few days of bread. Two kilos is less than a week’s groceries here at home.

The math is cold. It is accurate.

Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, deputy head of the Kherson military administration, said it himself to CBC: the aid “will give people the opportunity to live there for up to a month.” And he warned that the solution could be short-lived.

CBC describes the video of the operation, released by the administration, as promotional.

The parcel that exposes

It gets worse. Governor Oleksandr Prokudin accuses Russian forces of shooting down the supply drones, confiscating or reselling the food, and detaining residents who receive a parcel.

Volunteers who once organized evacuations said they feared, according to the Kyiv Independent, that these drops would bring Russian checks and a nightmare for people.

That is true. And it does not change this: those four tons far exceed the previous drops, according to officials cited by CBC, and no truck has come in since May 26.

A parcel is not a corridor.

The weeds from the garden

Recipes on Telegram

Back to the garden.

According to the BBC, which weeds are safe to eat, and how to boil them, have become topics of discussion in the town’s Telegram groups.

The Ukrainian head of the Oleshky administration, working in exile in Mykolaiv, Tetiana Hasanenko, passed residents’ messages on to CBC. People are trading tips on how to cook grass and garden weeds, she says.

Two potatoes, two cloves of garlic

A woman whose 70-year-old mother-in-law left Oleshky on foot told CBC what people sometimes found: “just two potatoes and two pieces of garlic.”

People barter, she says. Vegetables for eggs.

The July garden gave tomatoes. The September garden gives leaves you wash with water you don’t have.

The town has had no electricity, gas or water since the attack on the Kakhovka dam three years ago, according to the BBC.

There is the pot. There is the fire lit outdoors. There is the green smell of what is cooking. There is the hunger that comes back two hours later.

Hunger makes no noise. It wears you down. It makes the buckets heavier. It makes the stairs longer.

You don’t get hungry all at once. You get hungry in stages.

And when the weeds have frozen?

Weed recipes replace grocery lists.

The dead who cannot be buried

An impossible autopsy

Counting the dead in Oleshky is difficult, the BBC writes.

According to residents, the occupation authorities forbid burying those who died from a drone or a mine. They require an autopsy by a Russian doctor. There is none in Oleshky.

The hospital morgue has had no power since winter, according to a volunteer quoted by the BBC.

A list of 1,200 names

That volunteer, who fled the town in the summer of 2022, keeps a spreadsheet of the dead, with their names and dates of birth. She says she counts about 1,200. The BBC says it cannot verify that figure.

How many are there, exactly?

I report that figure as hers. The UN counts at least 29 civilians dead since January, over a wider area. The two numbers do not measure the same thing.

A co-founder of the charity Humanity speaks to the BBC of a tool of psychological pressure.

A body that cannot be buried stays in the town. It stays in the street you walk down, in the silence of the house next door. It weighs on those still living.

Even the dead wait for a doctor who never comes.

September 20, a bag of food

The road to Radensk

On September 20, a husband and wife are on their way back from Radensk.

They are carrying a bag of food.

They don’t make it home before the curfew imposed by the occupation authorities, according to a resident who knew them.

A drone hits them. They both die.

Four sources

Four separate sources confirmed to the BBC the deaths of two civilians carrying food that day.

Their names are not published. The resident fears being identified.

Twenty-three kilometers for a bag. Twenty-three kilometers to get back before curfew. Twenty-three kilometers too many.

A curfew. A drone.

Two people who went out to find something to eat, and never came home.

They were bringing home a bag of food. They never arrived.

The occupier’s duty

Moscow’s argument

The Kremlin’s defense exists, and it has a solid form.

Oleshky is on the front line. The Russian army has positions there. Ukrainian drones fly over the town, shells fall in both directions, and it is Kyiv that is supposedly blocking supplies. Besides, the Kremlin says its army is working to fix the problems.

That is what a spokesman would sign.

What turns it around

Humanitarian law, recalled on September 25 by the Council of Europe, does not split the blame in two. It assigns the feeding of civilians to the occupying power.

And Russian forces are preventing Ukraine and international humanitarian organizations from reaching the occupied territories, the Kyiv Independent writes.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, told the UN General Assembly of a “full blockade” by Russian forces.

An occupier that says it is working to fix a four-month-old shortage, and lets through neither a convoy nor an international organization, has made a choice.

The law does not ask the occupier to love the people it occupies. It asks it to feed them.

The law names who is responsible. Moscow names Kyiv.

We knew in June

The dates on file

Here is what the record already held, well before the end of September.

We knew in January, when the last store closed.

We knew on March 5, when a drone hit a food line and left two dead, according to the UN.

We knew in early May, when a drone wounded a paramedic, and then a second drone took the life of the wounded man and another civilian, according to the UN.

We knew on May 26, the day of the last supply run by road.

We knew on June 25, when the UN published its findings.

We knew on September 22, when Sybiha spoke at the UN.

No one will be able to say they didn’t know.

Three years earlier, the water

Oleshky has been swallowed once before. In June 2023, after the collapse of the Kakhovka dam, the water rose to the rooftops, the BBC recalls. Ukraine and NATO accused Russia of blowing up the dam. Moscow blamed Kyiv.

The water, then the hunger. The same accused, accusing the other.

We knew. We let autumn arrive.

A shield of civilians

What Tolokonnikov says

Why keep 2,000 to 6,000 civilians in a town without a store?

Oleksandr Tolokonnikov has his answer. Russian forces have placed guns, mortars and mines in and around residential neighborhoods, he tells the Kyiv Independent.

“Oleshky and its people are necessary for Russian troops,” he says. So that the Ukrainian army cannot actively attack them.

Guns. Mortars. Mines. And people around them.

That is the accusation of a Ukrainian official. I report it as such. At the very least, it explains why no one gets out.

The road on foot

In the spring, volunteers still managed to get people out, at the cost of exhausting trips lasting several days. Now, they say, the risk makes evacuation impossible.

In recent weeks, some residents have been leaving on foot for Radensk, alone or in pairs, on roads mined by Russian forces, according to the Kyiv Independent.

A 70-year-old mother-in-law walked for six hours to get out, her daughter-in-law told CBC.

Civilians in front of the guns, and a mined road behind.

A Canadian pilot and the silence

Cory Woods

A Canadian appears in this story. Cory Woods worked in humanitarian aid in Ukraine before becoming a drone-interceptor pilot, according to CBC.

He says he is disappointed that Oleshky’s plight has not drawn more attention around the world. At the very least, food and water, he says. At best, get the people out of there.

On September 20, outside Kyiv City Hall, a man held up a placard, according to CBC. It called on Americans to make Russia agree to a humanitarian corridor.

A placard in English, written to be read in Washington. The rest of the world reads it over Washington’s shoulder.

A week to learn a name

I’ll admit this: two weeks ago, I could not have placed Oleshky on a map.

I learned its name through its weeds. That is late. It is too late for the couple on the road from Radensk.

And yet a name learned late is better than a name never learned.

Oleshky doesn’t need our pity. It needs a corridor.

October, then the frost

A month, at best

Four tons of food for a month, at best, according to Tolokonnikov.

A month. Not a winter.

And yet October is coming. Then November. The garden will give nothing more, not even weeds.

The first frost does not negotiate.

The Council of Europe has called for a local ceasefire, unhindered humanitarian access and the safe evacuation of civilians. At the end of September, none of those three demands has been met.

What Ottawa can carry

Ottawa has no soldiers on the Dnipro. It has a voice. It has allies who have one too.

What exactly do we expect from Ottawa so that a corridor opens to Oleshky before the first frost?

The summer garden is empty. The winter one will not grow.

And in the town’s Telegram groups, people will trade other recipes, for as long as there is…

No convoy since May 26, and soon no weeds.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Kherson Military Administration — 4,000 kilos of food dropped by drone at 100 points in Oleshky, September 27, 2026
• Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights — Oleshky humanitarian crisis and the occupying power’s duties, September 25, 2026
• UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine — Oleshky and Hola Prystan, no deliveries since May 26, June 25, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Kyiv Independent — drone deliveries, detentions and a shield of civilians in Oleshky, September 27, 2026
• CBC News — airdrops on Oleshky, garden weeds and a Canadian pilot, September 27, 2026
• BBC News — garden weeds, unburied dead and a couple lost on the Radensk road, September 24, 2026