Trapped in Russian-occupied Oleshky, residents eat garden weeds as city faces total blockade

Halia's phone cuts out mid-sentence. She has just told the BBC that two more civilians died the night before in Oleshky, the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city where she is trapped. Three days later, when contact is restored, she explains who they were: a husband and wife she knew well. They had traveled to the neighboring town of Radensk, 23 kilometers away, to bring home a bag of food. But they could not make it back before the Russian-imposed curfew fell. A drone killed them both. Four separate sources have confirmed their deaths on September 20th.

Oleshky sits in southern Kherson, pinned between the Dnipro River—which separates it from Ukrainian-held territory—and Russian forces that have occupied the city since 2022. Before the full-scale invasion, 24,000 people lived here. The Ukrainian government now estimates roughly 6,000 remain, including 200 children. The city has become a front-line pocket of survival, where the basic infrastructure of life has collapsed. There is no electricity, no gas, no water. The last food delivery arrived in May. Shops are shuttered. Residents cannot buy clothes or hygiene products. The blockade is total.

Halia eats once a day—dinner only. Bread, sometimes with a tomato or honey, and tea. That is her meal. Around her, other residents have begun cooking garden weeds, boiling them to make them safe. On local Telegram chats, people discuss which weeds are edible and share recipes for preparing them. The same channels carry desperate exchanges: offers to sell, swap, or share pieces of food. Children in the city are suffering from malnutrition. Medical services have nearly vanished. Only one hospital remains partially operational, opening a few days each week to perform critical amputations. Schools are closed. The Ukrainian government says children in Oleshky are "degrading" without access to education.

Counting the dead in Oleshky is nearly impossible. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has recorded at least 29 civilians killed and 54 injured in Oleshky and the nearby town of Hola Prystan this year. But local volunteers believe the true number is far higher. Ksenia Arkhipova, a volunteer who escaped the city in summer 2022 and has since worked on food deliveries and evacuations, maintains a spreadsheet of the dead. She has compiled roughly 1,200 names, with dates of birth. The list grows by one or two people every day—someone killed by a drone, someone else who stepped on a landmine. The BBC cannot independently verify these figures, but residents have provided detailed accounts of their own losses. One woman, identified as Tetiana, confirmed that both her parents were killed in Oleshky this summer. Russian soldiers came to their home wanting to take it, she said. They were shot inside.

Russian occupation authorities have imposed restrictions on burials that make even counting the dead a form of control. Bodies of those killed by drones, landmines, or any means other than natural causes cannot be buried without a post-mortem examination by a Russian doctor—an impossibility in a city with no functioning medical infrastructure. As a result, only those who die of natural causes are permitted burial. Some bodies have been lying on the streets since December. Others are piled in the local hospital morgue, which has had no power since winter. Ester Vrataryova, co-founder of the charity Humanity, describes this as "a tool of psychological pressure." "If you try to bury a dead body, you'll become the next one," she says. The BBC has obtained numerous photographs from residents showing the decomposition of bodies on streets and the presence of stray dogs feeding on remains. The images are too graphic to publish.

In early September, the Kremlin acknowledged that Oleshky faced "a critical situation" with "problems with supplies of food and medicine," but claimed that Russia's military was working to resolve the crisis and blamed Kyiv for the blockade. Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha rejected this framing. Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York, he described Oleshky as living under a "full blockade" by Russian forces and called on the international community to pressure Russia into allowing humanitarian aid into the city. Ukraine has attempted to deliver supplies in recent months but has not succeeded. The people of Oleshky remain cut off, eating weeds, burying their dead in secret, and waiting for a relief that has not come.