Russian forces used the six-day ceasefire around occupied Oleshky to rotate units, fortify positions, expand anti-drone protection on roads, and bring up ammunition, Ukraine’s General Staff said on 2 November.

US First Lady Melania Trump, who coordinated the truce, wrote that she hoped Oleshky would serve “as a foundation for lasting peace.” The truce ended on 1 November. Sky News could not release the footage until the evacuees had reached Ukrainian-held territory, a journalist who worked on the report said. That footage shows Russian armor and supplies moving into Oleshky, nine kilometers from Kherson, during the pause. That suggests the next humanitarian ceasefire may come at a military price, and the marines across the river expect to fight a resupplied enemy.

Armored vehicles on the streets, aid carried off from the hospital

Sky News correspondent Stuart Ramsay watched the operation from the control center of the 34th Separate Marine Brigade. Even before the evacuation began, armored vehicles were on Oleshky’s streets, and soldiers with large rucksacks were filing into buildings with basements. After the convoy left on 30 October, one black vehicle peeled off and delivered supplies to Russian soldiers, Ukrainian military intelligence told Sky. Russian troops then carried boxes and sacks of aid out of the hospital to their positions.

The brigade’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dmytro Pulinets, told Sky what the brigade had recorded Russia doing:

• repairing or replacing its artillery
• retaking abandoned positions
• rotating the troops cut off in Oleshky
• bringing in new forces, aerial reconnaissance equipment, and fuel

The evacuation should have happened sooner, last year, he said. But “this is going to create a great deal of work for us once the ceasefire ends.”

Yana Borysova, Sky’s source inside the town, is now safe. She said Russian forces had “already brought in tanks, armored personnel carriers and soldiers.”

Bodies taken to occupied Henichesk

The footage also shows bodies being carried out of the hospital grounds in double body bags on 30 October and loaded onto a truck under Russian soldiers’ supervision. “Over 30 have been held there,” Ramsay said. Residents told Sky the dead had been killed in violent circumstances.

“There will be no investigation or inquiry into what happened to them,” Ramsay added.

On 1 November, Kherson journalist Oleh Baturin reported that 47 bodies kept in the hospital basement since May had been taken to occupied Henichesk, citing volunteer Kseniia Arkhipova. It is not clear whether they include the bodies in Sky’s footage. In September, Arkhipova told Ukrainska Pravda that Russian forces barred burials. She said they wanted the bodies examined in Henichesk to produce reports blaming Ukraine’s army. Tetiana Hasanenko, head of the Oleshky City Military Administration, put the number of bodies in the basement at about 100 at the time. Occupation authorities have long kept families from recovering their dead.

Nearly 800 out, as many as two-thirds stayed

Melania Trump also said the mission had evacuated nearly 800 people. She did not say how many went to Ukrainian-held territory and how many to Russia. Sky’s sources said as many as two-thirds of residents stayed in Oleshky. Those evacuated to Ukrainian-held territory were taken out through Russia and Belarus, Sky reported, and crossed the border on 31 October.

Ukraine’s and Russia’s human rights commissioners have agreed to keep working on regular humanitarian missions after the evacuation from occupied Oleshky, Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on 31 October. A day later, the ceasefire that made the evacuation possible ended.

Without a new truce, the people left behind are back where they were. In July, the Institute for the Study of War concluded that Russia was effectively blockading Oleshky, which lies across the Dnipro from Ukrainian-held Kherson. In May, journalist Zarina Zabrisky said the existing route out, through occupied Crimea, Russia, and Belarus, did not work: only three of 20 people who recently tried it got through.

Oleshky as a first step

Lubinets wrote that he and Russian ombudsman Yana Lantratova had agreed to continue work on regular missions. He said Oleshky should be the first step, since people living near the front line need constant support.

Lantratova claimed the same day that the sides had agreed to hold regular missions.

The truce had been coordinated by US First Lady Melania Trump. On 1 November, Lubinets said both sides had kept their commitments. He added that the two were working through the possibilities of continuing such steps.

Who stayed behind

On 30 October, Lubinets wrote that some buses were heading to Ukraine and others to Russia. About 700 to 1,000 people may remain in Oleshky, The Insider correspondent Tatiana Popova estimated on 31 October. Many feared a provocation or did not want to leave their homes.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops used the truce to evacuate 167 civilians, 22 of them children, from Ukrainian-held riverside settlements that came under daily Russian shelling, Ukraine’s General Staff reported on 1 November.

Bodies moved to Henichesk

On 1 November, Ukrainian journalist Oleh Baturin wrote that Henichesk residents had told him dozens of civilians’ bodies were brought there from Oleshky. Volunteer Kseniia Arkhipova confirmed it, he said. By her data, 47 bodies had been kept in the basements of Oleshky’s hospital since May.

How these people died remains unknown. In September, Tetiana Hasanenko, head of Oleshky’s Ukrainian military administration in exile, said more than 100 bodies lay in the basement of the hospital, which had had no electricity for four years.