“The road is mined. So, we’re stuck here,” says Ludmilla, over the phone from the rooftop of a fire-damaged house in southern Ukraine. “People are trying their best to survive.”
Her frontline home city of Oleshky has, according to multiple accounts, been largely cut off from fresh supplies of food or medicine for months.
Ludmilla describes being trapped there, and watching it decaying before her eyes.
Ukraine’s commissioner for human rights has warned of a “humanitarian crisis.”
Some recent deliveries do seem to have gone through, organised by volunteers or aid groups. Photos seen by the crowd of people, many of them elderly, apparently fetching fresh supplies in a city square.
A relief even if prices were high, says Ludmilla, as people have had to forage for food in the abandoned homes of neighbours. Ludmilla is not her real name. Her name and the names of other residents who have spoken to have been changed to protect their identities.
Pasta and tinned goods, she tells us, have become a key staple for the roughly 2,000 remaining population.
Any attempt to leave Oleshky, say locals, is to gamble with your life along what’s been dubbed “The Road of Death” – due to reports of heavy mining.
