Residents eating garden weeds in Russian-occupied city cut off from food and water

Residents surviving on garden weeds in Russian-held city cut off from food and water

Oleshky has been under Russian occupation since 2022, and its residents are now trapped.

“Two more civilians died last night,” Halia says, before her phone connection drops.

She is stuck in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Oleshky, which she says is “constantly shelled” and cut off from food and water.

Three days later, she says the two people killed were a husband and wife. She knew them well.

They had been carrying home a bag of food from the nearest neighbouring town, Radensk, 23km (14 miles) away, but could not make it back before a curfew imposed by Russian occupation authorities.

They were then killed by a drone. Four separate sources have confirmed the deaths of two civilians carrying food on 20 September.

Halia does not want to reveal their names for fear she could be identified. Her name has been changed to protect her safety.

Her story is one of many distressing accounts the BBC has heard from residents in the front-line city in southern Kherson in recent days.

Occupied by Russia since 2022, Oleshky is trapped between the Dnipro River, which separates it from Ukrainian positions, and Russian forces.

It is also one of the cities where thousands of people lost their homes after the collapse of Nova Khakova Dam in 2023, flooding buildings up to their rooftops. Ukraine and Nato accused Russia of blowing up the dam, while Russia blamed Ukraine.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Oleshky had a population of 24,000. Now the Ukrainian government estimates that about 6,000 people remain in the city and surrounding areas, including 200 children.

Residents say children still in the wider Oleshky area are suffering from malnutrition, a lack of medical care, and are “degrading” without access to education.

Many have also told the BBC independently that only one hospital is partly functioning, opening a few days a week to carry out critical amputations.

Ukraine has tried to deliver supplies to the area but has not succeeded in recent months.

Earlier this week, the Kremlin acknowledged that Oleshky faced “a critical situation” and “problems with supplies of food and medicine”, but added that “Russia’s military was working to resolve them” and blamed Kyiv.

According to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha, the local population is living under a “full blockade” by Russian forces.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Sybiha urged the international community to pressure Russia into allowing humanitarian aid into the city.

Oleshky was flooded after the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka Dam in June 2023.

Inside Oleshky, Halia is struggling every day to survive.

“There is no food here in the city,” she says, adding that the last food delivery was in May.

“I eat once a day, a dinner only,” she says. “I make some plain bread, sometimes I can have it with a tomato, or with some honey, and a tea. That’s it.”

She explains that many residents have started cooking garden weeds after running out of the vegetables they managed to grow over the summer.

Oleshky has had no gas or electricity since 2023, so residents have had to find other ways to cope.

Which weeds are safe to eat and how to boil them has become a subject of discussion in local Telegram messaging chats, along with calls between residents to sell, swap or share pieces of food.

No shops are open any more in Oleshky, and residents cannot find clothes or hygiene products. The city has had no electricity, gas or water since the Kakhovka dam was attacked three years ago.

While some residents have risked walking out of the city on mined roads in search of supplies, it is now considered too dangerous.

These residents were able to get out of Oleshky in spring this year.

Determining how many people have been killed in Oleshky is difficult.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has recorded reports this year of at least 29 civilians killed and 54 injured in Oleshky and Hola Prystan.

Local volunteers believe the number could be much higher.

Ksenia Arkhipova has been counting the dead since she managed to escape Oleshky in summer 2022, a few months after it was taken by the Russian army.

She is a volunteer involved in efforts to deliver food and medicine and to facilitate evacuations to Oleshky. Locals trust her with sensitive personal information.

“I’ve been putting together a spreadsheet of all those who died as soon as I find out about it, with their names and dates of birth – I’ve got around 1,200 people now,” she says. “Sometimes I don’t have time to update it, as the list grows one or two people longer every day: someone was killed by a drone, someone else stepped on the landmine.”

Although the BBC cannot independently verify these figures, one local resident has given a personal account of losing loved ones.

Tetiana — also not her real name — said both her parents were killed in Oleshky this summer. She confirmed their identities to the BBC with their dates of birth and photos, but asked that they not be published for her own safety.

“They were shot inside their home. Russian soldiers came there and wanted to take it,” she said.

Residents say Russian occupation authorities have restricted the burial of bodies of people killed in Oleshky, making it even harder to count the dead.

They “do not allow us to bury the dead if they were killed by a drone, stepped on a landmine or were killed in any other way”, Tetiana said.

The BBC has been told that Russia’s occupation authorities require those deaths to be confirmed by a post mortem examination carried out by a Russian doctor. That is not possible in Oleshky.

She added that only those who die of natural causes can be buried, and as a result, “some bodies have been on the streets since December”.

Bodies are “either getting piled” up in the local hospital morgue, “where there’s been no power since winter”, says volunteer Ksenia Arkhipova, or “stray dogs eat them”.

The BBC has verified that detail based on numerous pictures obtained from residents. They are too graphic to publish.

“This is a tool of psychological pressure,” says Ester Vrataryova, co-founder of the charity Humanity, which helps people in Oleshky and the wider Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.

“If you try to bury a dead body, you’ll become the next one,” she says.