Report says North Korea takes much of the wages earned by its workers who are sent to Russia under threat of retribution
© AFP/Getty
Russia says it has downed most of 613 drones headed for its capital region overnight
© AFP/Getty
© Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Euromaidan Press has been impersonated as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. A copycat website was created, with a hyphen added to our name, which published a fabricated article alleging a Ukrainian drone had killed civilians in Kramatorsk that cites anonymous "Ukrainian OSINT channels" amid copies of our real news reports. In reality, that 8 October strike was a Russian aerial bombing of two public buses that killed 33 civilians.
The fabrication is part of a years-long Russian disinformation campaign to impersonate and clone trusted news brands, predominantly in Europe, and publish false reports under their names. The disinformation research project Gnida tied our case to Storm-1516, one of several overlapping Russian operations, alongside the older Doppelganger, and NewsGuard, which reached out to us while preparing its own debunk, attributes the fake to the same operation. The fabricated Kramatorsk report comes amid an ongoing effort to erode Western support for Ukraine, as Russia's war goes on, and to sow distrust among Western political elites.
The fake started circulating on 24 October, one day after the forged publication appeared on our website. It started making rounds on X together with a forged video with a version of our logo claiming that "newly obtained footage" featured the remains of a Liutyi drone that "independent OSINT channels" claimed were "quickly removed from the scene." No specific OSINT channels were named; no sources were linked.
The forged video, apparently produced with AI, and the link were spread by X accounts such as @vick55top, @indiaTales7, @TheWorld_Update, @Wonder_star21, @Theunk5555, @SilentBriefHQ1, and @Suriyakmaps, where it was subsequently removed. The videos on those accounts averaged 400,000 to 500,000 views, far more than the accounts' modest follower counts and their usual engagement would produce, a likely sign of inauthentic amplification.
On 25 October, the Russian disinformation monitor Gnida Project flagged this as a case of the Storm-1516 disinformation campaign. Other recent cases flagged by Gnida included advertisements of Russian Geran drones, claims of the Shamonda virus being leaked from a "Ukrainian biolab," smears against US Democratic candidates, and a fake on a similar copycat "toronto-sun.ca" website alleging that President Zelenskyy purchased a nuclear bunker in Nova Scotia.
The latest Storm-1516 disinformation campaign is targeting Ukraine. The campaign promotes a false narrative that a deadly strike in the Ukrainian city Kramatorsk was performed by a Ukrainian drone based on a fake "Ukrainian OSINT investigation" pic.twitter.com/Klpm9UVCf2
— gnida project (@gnidaproject) October 25, 2026
As for the actual content of the fake, the real event is one of the most thoroughly documented atrocities of the month. On 8 October 2026, Russian forces struck two public buses in Kramatorsk with an aerial bomb, killing 33 people and wounding about 18. Such attacks are, sadly, a daily occurrence in cities on the frontline. There was no Ukrainian drone and no removed wreckage. The fabrication simply reassigns a Russian mass killing of civilians to its victim, which is the entire point.
The fake site was not a single page. It scraped our entire website, mirroring our genuine articles, and injected the fabricated one among them, so the lie traveled under the credibility of real reporting. The look-alike domain was registered on 15 October, eight days before the fake appeared, according to who.is data.
Gnida Project identified the fake as part of Storm-1516, a Russian influence operation that clones trusted news brands to spread fabricated stories, and NewsGuard, which contacted us about the impersonation, attributes it to the same operation. NewsGuard has documented the tactic generating some 900 false reports over three years; the same operation has targeted France and Germany and has recently impersonated other outlets, including in Ukraine, such as this fake report on a copycat website pretending to be the New Voice of Ukraine.
Storm-1516 is one of several overlapping Russian operations that impersonate real media. Since 2022, the Doppelganger network has cloned whole Western outlets and government sites, and it is still active, flooding France with more than 200 fake sites before its 2026 elections. Polish fact-checkers literally call the tactic “attack of the clones.” A second operation, Matryoshka, floods social media with cheap fake videos credited to real outlets. Storm-1516, first identified in late 2023 and later named by Microsoft, grew out of Russia's Prigozhin-era troll operations, is the most elaborate of the three, and has overtaken RT and Sputnik as Russia's main disinformation machine. Its attacks combine cloned websites and fake videos.
NewsGuard counts some 906 fabricated reports impersonating 163 outlets from 21 countries since 2023, Euronews, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and France 24 most of all, as well as the Kyiv Independent. The fakes nearly all bend one way, to erode Western support for Ukraine. Some smear Ukraine's leaders, a fabricated story that 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers evacuated to France had deserted into criminal gangs, invented claims that first lady Olena Zelenska fled abroad. Others, like the one aimed at us, flip Russian actions onto Ukraine. A separate Storm-1516 fabrication, a false claim that Ukrainian officials bought yachts with misappropriated US aid, was repeated in 2023 by JD Vance, then a US senator.
We filed a copyright and abuse complaint with the host, Namecheap, and a phishing report with Cloudflare, and pressed the registrar. The complaints worked: the clone has been taken down.
Impersonation is cheap to set up, and any outlet can be next, so here is the procedure our technical team used, which other newsrooms can follow to take a clone down quickly.
Be sure to read the automated replies from the host and Cloudflare and answer them promptly. Those acknowledgments often ask for specific additional information, and a fast, complete reply keeps the ticket moving instead of stalling in a queue.
Many users on X called out the signs: a look-alike domain (our only website is euromaidanpress.com, with no hyphen), a claim sourced to unnamed "OSINT channels," and a story that reassigns a Russian attack to Ukraine.
We never publish an image or video without crediting its source, and we never cite anonymous OSINT experts: our reporting traces to a first source. Trust only reports that name the first source of a claim and label the origin of their images and video. If you cannot trace the source, you cannot trust the report.
Ukraine should pass the bill to join Europe’s single euro-payment zone without delay, because it would save Ukrainians up to €100 million a year. For businesses that buy goods or equipment in the EU, the cost of a transfer would fall several-fold and settle in minutes or hours instead of five to seven days, says the country’s representative to the EU, Taras Kachka.
The bill, No. 14327-d, aligns Ukraine’s rules against money laundering and terrorism financing with EU standards and those of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), part of the commitments on its path to EU membership. It has to move soon: the simplified route into the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is open only until November 2026.
If Ukraine misses that window, new stricter EU anti-money-laundering directives take effect, raising the bar and risking years of delay.
Even once parliament passes the bill, connecting Ukraine’s banks will take about another year and a half, with full launch set for 1 January 2028. In Kachka’s words: “Passing the European-integration legislation for Ukraine to join the Single Euro Payments Area is critically necessary, needed ‘yesterday.’”
He said he hopes lawmakers will use the opportunity to pass the changes.
Kachka expressed hope that Ukraine's parliament would vote in favor of the necessary amendments, using this important political moment to benefit society.
“This will truly help businesses of all sizes, traders, manufacturers, importers and, of course, ordinary people who have so many relatives and colleagues in Europe and interact with them regularly,” Kachka noted.
SEPA's greatest practical value lies with small and medium-sized firms, including limited liability companies and sole proprietors. Membership would allow them to make cross-border euro payments on the same day at minimal cost, with no need to provide founding or confirming documents for each transfer.
Additionally, Ukrainian producers who export to the EU would be paid on their invoices instantly, as easily as inside the country.
“It really is help for every small and large business, traders, producers, importers and, of course, ordinary people who have so many relatives and dealings with colleagues in Europe,” Kachka adds.
Ukraine has offered its soldiers a fixed term and a guaranteed way home under new contracts to encourage more people to enlist. However, in more than four months, only about 8,600 have signed, a drop in the ocean for a force of around a million, Ukrainska Pravda reports.
The system, launched on 15 June 2026 as an experimental government project, lets soldiers sign for a fixed term for the first time: infantry-assault contracts of 6 to 14 months, and combat and base contracts of two years, each ending in a guaranteed discharge and a deferral from re-mobilization.
That guarantee was meant to draw people in, but many soldiers, even some who signed, do not believe the state will let them go when their term ends.
The most common answer soldiers give is flat: “I don’t believe that after the contract ends I will really be able to leave and get a deferral.”
The doubt has history: officials have promised fixed service terms since 2023 and kept pushing them back. About 2,000 had signed a month after enrollment opened, and the total has crept only to around 8,600 since.
Veterans have a second grievance: those who have served since 2022 can sign for the same terms as raw recruits and get the same deferral, which starts at six months, too short, many say, to rebuild a civilian life before the draft reaches them again.
Meanwhile, new pay is reaching the troops. Higher combat payments are going out after some early paperwork delays, commanders confirm.
“The guys are getting good money. Everyone is very satisfied,” says Oleksandr Nastenko, who commands the 475th separate assault regiment “Code 9.2” under the callsign Flint.
The increases, though, were uneven, now one of the sorest points in the ranks. Infantry and assault troops saw the biggest jump, from about $2,700 to between $6,700 and $10,300 a month, while drone operators and other combat specialists who often share the same trenches received no comparable raise.
Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara’s team is now weighing which parts of the experiment to carry into a future reform bill.
© AP Photo/Evan Agostini
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Elon Musk as a genius and revealed Russia is in contact with him as it develops a rival satellite internet network.
© AP
Ukraine may have to revisit its blackout measures if Russia begins mass-using the Susanin optical navigation module on Geran-5 drones and other drones and missiles at night, Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, a defense-technology adviser to Ukraine’s president, says. Road and highway lighting will be the first concern.
Russia keeps upgrading the weapons it sends against Ukrainian cities. It has already fitted its jet-powered Gerans with machine vision that lets them recognize and track targets on their own in the final seconds of flight, which Ukraine’s electronic warfare cannot easily defeat.
In 2022, Ukrainians switched off lights out of fear. Flash says that if optical navigation spreads, darkness may have to become a deliberate defense.
“If our enemy begins to use the Susanin optical navigation module en masse on the Geran-5 and other drones (missiles) at night, we may have to revisit the question of light masking,” Beskrestnov says.
This especially concerns the lighting of roads and stretches of highways, where cars are especially vulnerable to drone and missile attacks, with Ukrainian rescuers named being in a vehicle during a strike as one of the most dangerous places.
Meanwhile, Beskrestnov does not say how widely Russia already uses the module.
Jet-powered Gerans already fly too fast for the mobile gun teams and light interceptors that stop slower drones, and Ukraine is still testing jet interceptors of its own.
“Credit to the Russians. They know how to scale,” Serhii Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, said in September.
By August, Russian forces were striking Kyiv almost twice a week on average, each attack costing the city about $12 million, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Ukraine’s Economy Ministry expects losses from Russian strikes to reach up to $10 billion this year.
Starting in May, Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps began exploiting gaps in Russian lines just north of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast. Five months later, the corps and its supporting drone units had cleared Russian troops from 277 sq km of northern Donetsk, inflicting what the corps says were 8,000 Russian casualties and pushing the Russian 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies back across a key terrain feature: the Zherebets River.
On 14 October, the 3rd Army Corps declared victory in its Operation Vivaldi. "Four seasons of Vivaldi are over. But the music plays on," the corps wrote on Telegram.
It was unclear at the time what the corps meant. Its commander, Brig. Gen. Andrii Biletskyi, has since been seconded to lead Ukraine's new Center Group of Forces. But it's clearer now. According to at least two observers, Ukrainian troops have continued attacking along the Zherebets River—and have even crossed the river at several points.
If true and confirmed, the crossings could ratchet up the pressure on the battered Russian 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies following their hasty and chaotic retreat from their former salient north of Sloviansk. The Zherebets should have been a natural defensive barrier for the Russians.
Sheltering on the river's eastern bank, the Russians could have rested, reset, and reinforced in preparation for a renewed offensive next year. But if the Ukrainians keep attacking, rest might be impossible. And that could force the Russians to rethink any plans for a fresh push toward Sloviansk and neighboring Kramatorsk, the last two big free cities in Donetsk.
But an extension of Operation Vivaldi isn't without risk for the 3rd Army Corps. If the corps pushes too far, too fast across a difficult obstacle, it could expose itself to counterattack.
Ukraine's "Vilvadi" counteroffensive in the Lyman direction has not stopped, despite claims to the contrary.
— AMK Mapping
Ukrainian forces have made new advances in several different areas over the last couple of weeks, crossing the Zherebets River onto its eastern bank at multiple different…(@AMK_Mapping_) October 26, 2026
Ukraine's Vivaldi counteroffensive in the Lyman direction "has not stopped, despite claims to the contrary," the mapping account AMK Mapping explained on Monday after noting possible Ukrainian forces on the eastern side of the Zherebets in recent weeks. "Ukrainian forces have made new advances in several different areas over the last couple of weeks, crossing the Zherebets River onto its eastern bank at multiple different locations." AMK Mapping also noted that many Ukrainian assaults over the past month had been repelled and that casualties were likely rising.
AMK Mapping isn't alone. On Monday, mapper Suriyak also logged Ukrainian troops on the far side of the Zherebets in three key settlements: Makiivka, Novosadove, and Terny. "They are establishing a significant bridgehead," Suriyak wrote.
The possible Ukrainian river crossings could defy recent expectations. "The Ukrainians have continued their push and advancement toward the Zherebets River," mapper Clément Molin wrote on 20 October. "They have reached it at several points, and Russian forces no longer control any territory west of this river—with the exception of the forest east of Lyman."
Ukrainian-Russian war. Day 1700-1704:
— @Suriyak (@Suriyakmaps) October 26, 2026
Situation on Luhansk front: During the last two weeks, Ukrainian army has managed to secure new positions on the western bank of the Zherebets River, including the south of Makiivka and the rest of Novolyubivka. However, military… pic.twitter.com/zfi1Txv3eA
But Molin didn't expect the 3rd Army Corps to force the river, a risky maneuver under the best of circumstances. "Despite various rumors, I have not been able to confirm that the Ukrainians have actually crossed the river," Molin wrote.
Instead, he expected the Ukrainian corps to do what the defeated Russian field armies were trying to do: consolidate in new positions and get ready for the next round of major fighting, potentially next year. "For the time being, I believe the Ukrainians will focus on consolidating their gains and adopting a defensive posture."
If indeed the 3rd Army Corps has crossed the Zherebets, it's a possible indication that the corps still has some combat power in reserve—and is eager to prolong its momentum for as long as possible, even if that means heavier losses in risky river crossings.
A major clash could occur if and when the 3rd Army Corps tries to seize full control of Terny, which anchors the Russian line on the east bank of the Zherebets. Two years ago, Terny was the site of intensive fighting as Russian forces fought their way across the Zherebets on their long march toward Sloviansk. That battle was a costly victory for the Russians as they sent mechanized column after mechanized column across a drone kill zone toward Terny.
The worst outcome for the outnumbered Ukrainian troops in northern Donetsk may be a mirror image of the Russian march through Terny in 2024. Yes, the Russians eventually captured Terny and secured a bridgehead on the western bank of the Zherebets. But the Russians overextended as they kept pushing toward Sloviansk, roughly 40 km to the southwest of Terny.
It's that overextension that afforded the 3rd Army Corps the opportunity to counterattack and roll back the hard-won Russian gains. To preserve its own recent victory on the western side of the Zherebets, the 3rd Army Corps may want to choose caution. Ukrainian forces "need to organize a coherent and solid defensive line," Molin advised.
That may mean not attacking across the Zherebets—despite the temptation to do so.
The great powers may be about to sit down and carve up the world’s spheres of influence again, and that is exactly what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warns against. He says a possible meeting of US President Donald Trump, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin would likely focus on the Middle East and Ukraine, and that he does not want it to become a new “Yalta.”
At the Yalta Conference in 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill carved postwar Europe into spheres of influence, settling the fate of smaller nations without them at the table.
Zelenskyy warns that a meeting of today’s great powers could revive that practice.
Zelenskyy is blunt about who such a format would serve. He says he cannot see what China would gain from it, while Russia stands to gain a great deal.
“I just don’t see the benefit for China, and I definitely see the benefit of this format for Russia. We’ll see what kind of meeting this will be,” Zelenskyy says.
That advantage, he argues, would build on the 2025 Alaska summit, the Trump-Putin meeting that ended without a deal but which Moscow has since invoked as a baseline for its demands.
What the three powers would actually discuss is not yet settled, Zelenskyy says, but Ukraine would be on the table whether or not it is in the room.
“They will certainly talk about the Middle East. They will certainly talk about Ukraine. I really don’t want this to be ‘Yalta 2, 3, 4,’ when there is a redistribution of influence,” he says.
He adds that he would like the trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi to take place before any meeting in China.
Ukraine has relied heavily on Starlink throughout the Russian invasion but complained earlier this month of speed restrictions
© AFP/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian drones reportedly struck the Azot chemical plant in Novomoskovsk, Tula Oblast, Russia, one of the country’s largest nitrogen-fertilizer producers, on 28 October. The attack set off a major fire at the facility overnight, Exilenova+ reports.
Russia’s munitions need explosives, and those explosives start from nitric acid, a basic industrial chemical. Azot is one of Russia’s biggest sources of it, a plant Ukraine has struck before and hit again overnight.
Military observer Oleksandr Kovalenko explains why the plant matters for Russia. Azot is one of Russia’s biggest producers of ammonia, ammonium nitrate, urea, and methanol, and in 2023 the company reported supplying more than 60 countries, he says.
For the war economy, he argues, one product stands out from the rest.
“The main reason for its strategic importance is nitric acid and its role in producing explosives for munitions,” Kovalenko says.
The acid goes into the chemical synthesis behind some of Russia’s most powerful explosives, and ammonia, further up the chain, is the base feedstock that the whole of nitrogen chemistry runs on.
Kovalenko is careful not to overstate what the plant does. Ammonium nitrate, the compound most associated with Azot, is first of all a fertilizer and only secondarily a raw material for industrial explosives.
“The fact of its production alone does not mean the plant makes military munitions,” he stresses.
The same holds for methanol and the plant’s other chemicals, whose military weight depends on which enterprise they are shipped to and what it builds there.
What gives Azot its place in the war machine, in his account, is that it sits one step back from the weapon, feeding the factories that make explosives rather than making them itself.
“Azot does not necessarily produce finished explosives itself. Its role is to supply raw materials to the next-link enterprises that produce energetic materials,” Kovalenko says.
The clearest trace of that role runs through a single customer: recorded deliveries of nearly 5,000 tons of nitric acid to the Sverdlov plant, sanctioned by Ukraine for actions threatening its sovereignty, between 2022 and 2024, with data from 2026 showing the reagent concentrated among a handful of Russian firms.
Ukraine’s Military Intelligence (HUR) has published the names of 49 Russian and Belarusian companies and institutions building Rassvet, Russia’s low-orbit satellite internet system, on its War&Sanctions portal, the agency said on 28 October. It needs it for its military purposes.
Russian troops ran front-line communications and long-range strike drones on smuggled Starlink terminals until SpaceX blocked them on 1 February 2026. Ukraine still flies on Musk’s network, and on 24 October it got back to full speed after a ten-day cap imposed abroad. Rassvet is meant to give Russia’s army satellite links under its own control.
HUR has said Moscow may struggle to obtain components for more satellites, and its list names the suppliers that sanctions would need to target while the network is still being built.
Rassvet is first of all a military communications system. Russia plans to use it for command and control, strike platforms, and drones, and to install terminals in the command-and-staff vehicles of Iskander-M missile systems, HUR says.
The Central Research Institute of Automation and Hydraulics is involved in integrating Rassvet into army communications, including fitting command vehicles, Iskander ones among them, with terminals once 292 satellites are in orbit, according to the portal. The same institute produces guidance components for the Iskander-M and Kinzhal missiles.
Planned coverage takes in Ukraine and the EU first, and once it is wide enough, Russia could use the system in hybrid attacks on other countries. That is why partners should block Rassvet’s access to components, equipment, and software now, the agency said.
The lead company is Bureau 1440, part of the IKS Holding tech group. According to the portal, it is linking its flight control center to systems of the Russian Defense Ministry. Roscosmos launches the satellites into orbit, and its head, Dmitry Bakanov, personally oversees Rassvet.
Meanwhile, Belintersat, Belarus’s national satellite operator, signed a partnership with Bureau 1440 in May 2026 to bring Rassvet into Belarus’s telecom network. It is a branch of the Plant of Precision Electromechanics, Belarus’s lead missile developer and maker of the Polonez rocket launcher.
Another Belarusian firm, Aerospace Instruments, prototypes components for the system.
Of the 49, 23, Roscosmos among them, are not under sanctions by any country in the sanctions coalition. The companies involved “must be included in all blacklists” of countries, banks, and businesses, the agency wrote.
Russia launched its first 16 Rassvet satellites earlier this year. Stable communications would need 200–250 in orbit, Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, then adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, said in May.
By August, Russia had launched 32 Rassvet satellites and planned seven more launches by the end of 2026, a HUR official told Janes. Only 12 of them, all from the first batch, had reached a sustainable altitude by the end of August, ISW reported.
Ukrainian soldiers trekked through nine miles of muddy underground tunnels into Kupiansk where they took 30 prisoners
© Skelya 425
The UK pledged £10billion of support to Ukraine in Wednesday’s Budget, with Zelensky praising the Prime Minister as a result
© AP
The third Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow is attended by African leaders and government delegations from 48 countries
© Reuters
© AFP/Getty
Ahead of a harsh winter, the Netherlands is giving Ukraine €1.2 billion to keep the lights and water on under Russian strikes. Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sjoerd Sjoerdsma announced the aid during a visit to Kyiv on 28 October.
The package comes as Russia targets Ukraine’s energy system every winter. Last winter’s strikes damaged or destroyed roughly 80% of the grid, and Moscow’s next target is Ukraine’s water supply.
“Ukraine is under heavy fire and faces a very harsh winter,” Sjoerdsma said.
That, he stated, is why the government is taking additional steps now. The funds will be distributed over the next three years.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said Kyiv needed $8-10 billion to get through winter, TSN reported.
Also, the Netherlands is fast-tracking €40 million this year to Ukraine’s Energy Support Fund for urgent repairs to power and water facilities, which are increasingly targeted by Russian strikes.
Another €55 million goes to in-kind support: energy equipment supplied by Dutch companies to Ukrainian partners through the Netherlands Enterprise Agency.
The money will also help build emergency reserves and train staff in the energy and water sectors.
Most of the rest goes to business. Some €136 million will go to the Partnership Facility with Ukraine and other programs, and a further €19.5 million is added to export credit insurance, on top of an existing €60 million line, to lower the risk for Dutch companies entering the Ukrainian market.
Separately, the Netherlands signed a letter of intent to contribute €10 million to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “Industrial Ramstein” initiative, which aims to restore and modernize the production capacity of Ukrainian companies. Sjoerdsma traveled to Kyiv with Koen van Oostrom, chair of the business association VNO-NCW.
The support also covers the search for Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, through the UN, as well as housing, humanitarian aid, healthcare, demining, and the restoration of cultural heritage.
In all, the Netherlands is confirming the previously promised €878 million in non-military aid and an additional €327 million, much of it delivered through the EBRD, the World Bank, and the European Investment Bank.
The same day, President Zelenskyy said he had arrived in the Netherlands on an official visit. The two sides plan to discuss defense and economic cooperation, strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses, and further support for Ukraine. Zelenskyy is also set to have an audience with King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.
Civilians in Russian-occupied Oleshky, Kherson Oblast, are to be evacuated from the town hospital on the morning of 30 October, Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, deputy head of the Kherson Oblast Military Administration, told DW on 27 October. The date could still change, he said.
Oleshky, a town on the Dnipro’s left bank across from Kherson, has been occupied by Russia since February 2022 and has gone short of food and medicine for months. Of about 24,000 pre-war residents, 1,700 to 2,000 remain, mostly elderly, the White House estimates. Drone strikes and mines have cut the town off from the rest of the region, the Financial Times reported. The evacuation would give them an organized way out, and test whether Russia lets those who choose Ukraine actually leave.
The route for those who want to go to Ukrainian-controlled territory is not yet set and will likely pass through Russia, Tolokonnikov said. “There will be two paths,” he added: one for those who want to stay in occupied territory or in Russia, and one for those who want to leave.
On 27 October, Russian President Vladimir Putin described Oleshky as a “Russian settlement” in a call with the leaders of Finland and Norway, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported. ISW said it remains unclear whether occupation authorities will give residents “a legitimate and duress-free choice” to return to Ukraine. It warned that Moscow may treat holders of Russian passports as Russian citizens with no legal recourse to return.
People with knowledge of the talks told the Financial Times that residents who agree to leave would first be taken to occupied Crimea or Russia. The paper also reported that buses would take people out on Thursday morning, 29 October, a day earlier than the date Tolokonnikov gave.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in a television interview on 25 October, the FT reported, that Russia would “de-mine in such a way that these people go towards Russia and remain there.”
The ceasefire took effect at 03:00 Kyiv time on 27 October and runs until 22:59 on 1 November, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said on X. A day later, he wrote that Oleshky had gone 30 hours without an incident, crediting his contact with Russia’s human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova. The goal, he wrote, is to “create the conditions for the safe departure of those who need it.”
Ceasefire in Oleshky: Agreement Being Fully Honored
— Dmytro Lubinets (@lubinetzs) October 27, 2026As of 5:30 p.m. on October 27, Ukraine and Russia are adhering to the ceasefire agreement in designated areas related to the humanitarian mission.
The ceasefire came into effect today at 3:00 a.m. Kyiv time and 4:00 a.m.… pic.twitter.com/2dzMIXRANX
The truce also covers Kherson Oblast’s coast, and Kherson city has gone quiet, Tolokonnikov told DW. The city has “literally come alive,” Lubinets wrote on 28 October, adding that both sides were still fully complying as of 12:00. On the truce’s first day, Volodymyr Obertas, an Oleshky-born press officer of Ukraine’s 34th Marine Brigade, was killed in central Kherson while escorting journalists. The brigade’s communications chief told Suspilne he stepped on an unidentified explosive device. The Defense Ministry’s Army TV said Russian forces detonated it remotely.
The deal reaches beyond Oleshky. Under terms both sides signed, Russia and Ukraine are to organize aid deliveries and repatriation in Kherson Oblast settlements as needed, at least once a month, after the Oleshky mission, Fox News reported.
The White House announced the ceasefire on 23 October, crediting First Lady Melania Trump with brokering it.
“I anticipate some will want to go to Russia, and some to Ukraine,” she said.
Ukraine’s 34th Marine Brigade, working with National Guard and border guard units in Joint Forces South, delivered about 4 tons of food and medicine to Oleshky by drone, the command said on 25 October. According to intelligence, Russia is preparing dozens of staged videos in the town, in which residents would be forced to say on camera that they are well fed and grateful to the occupiers, it added.
Residents who try to leave the front-line town on their own cross mined ground, and Russian troops have seized food that Ukraine dropped in by drone.
Connexion
