Mick Hartley

We hear more and more now of the success of Ukrainian drones taking the fight to Russia, targeting oil refineries even in Moscow and St Petersburg. but the appalling suffering Putin has inflicted on Ukraine is still central to the story of the war and its legacy.

A Times report from Jack Clover on the Ukrainian town of Oleshky:

Before the war, the small resort town of Oleshky in the Kherson region of Ukraine was known for its waterfront promenade, its nearby nature reserve and the popularity of summer sailing holidays on its network of rivers.

Now it is under blockade, trapped in the “kill zone” between Russian and Ukrainian lines and the Dnipro river. The only road out has been mined, drones circle overhead and bodies are strewn across the streets.

New testimony from witnesses trapped there and those who have escaped reveals an unfolding crisis that observers say is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in more than four years of war.

Ksenia Arkhipova, a former police officer from Oleshky who now lives in the Mykolaiv region, has compiled a list of almost 200 civilians who have died in the town, using messages, photos and documents sent to her over Telegram by those still living under occupation. The real toll is thought to be higher. “The world saw what happened in Bucha after it was liberated. Oleshky — it is a tragedy that is unfolding right now, and people are still trapped there,” she said. 

The colour-coded list details the name, age and cause of death. Viktor Podliesov, 78, stepped on a mine, lost his legs and bled out. Larysa Filippova, 63, was hit by a drone outside a shop. Oleksii Kolomoiets, 86, drowned. Oksana and Serhii Balashova were shot by Russian soldiers who then set their bodies alight. This winter, Serhiy Pisaryk, 71, froze to death in his flat….

Images from Oleshky seen by The Times corroborate reports of bodies on the street. In one image a labrador, one of a pack of dogs left behind by their owners, gnaws a human corpse. “Wherever people fell the dogs ate them. There were so many dogs. You try to go near and they’re gnawing and swallowing,” said Kulikovsky, who would attempt to bat the dogs away with a stick.

Mukanov recalls how Russian soldiers, not wanting to risk infection themselves, would pay local men a thousand roubles per corpse, either of Russian soldiers or civilians, to take bodies to the outskirts of town and bury them in the forest. “It was a kind of business,” he said.

The town morgue was bombed and a hospital basement where doctors attempt to keep the deceased cool is overflowing as no vehicles can enter the town to retrieve them….

Overhead are drones, hundreds of them. Arkhipova, the volunteer who runs several Telegram groups for people in Oleshky, says Russian forces hit civilians with drones in Oleshky as “target practice” in a way that is not dissimilar from the “drone safari” documented across the river in Kherson….

Tatyana Hasanenko, a director of the town council now in exile, said it was wrong to attempt to compare different horrors and crimes of the Ukraine war. “However, Bucha was occupied for around a month, Isium for a bit longer, Oleshky … is in its fifth year of occupation,” she said. “The world should be horrified about what is happening and should help save the people who remain there.”