Civilians in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region braced on Sunday night for the return of war as a six-day localised ceasefire came to an end, with no violations reported by either side and no extension announced.
Why it matters: the pause was the longest local truce since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and it produced a rare joint humanitarian operation between Kyiv and Moscow in a war now grinding through its fifth year.
Ukraine’s military said it evacuated 167 more people from threatened areas of the southern Kherson region on Sunday, including 22 children and 21 people with limited mobility who needed special assistance.
“Units of civil-military cooperation of the ‘South’ group of forces, in cooperation with representatives of local authorities, evacuated 167 civilians to safer points in the Kherson region,” Ukraine’s General Staff wrote on Telegram, according to Reuters.
An estimated 2,000 civilians were in Oleshky when the temporary truce took hold. They were offered the choice of evacuating to territory controlled by Ukraine or to territory occupied by Russia, or of remaining in the city with replenished food and medical supplies.
“The ceasefire across Oleshky and the surrounding Kherson region has provided residents with the freedom to move, access to food, clean water, medicine, plus a renewed sense of dignity without the constant threat of attack,” Melania Trump said on social media. “Let Oleshky become the starting point for lasting peace.”
The six-day ceasefire in front-line Oleshky and the surrounding area was reached after mediation efforts by the United States first lady and with the involvement of Pope Leo XIV. It began early on Tuesday, 27 October, and was set to expire at 10:59pm Ukraine time on Sunday, or 20:59 GMT.
Ukraine’s Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, confirmed the end of the pause. “The ceasefire, which was in effect from Oct 27 to Nov 1, has ended,” he said, calling the temporary truce “an important step in our joint humanitarian efforts” with Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, quoted by Russian news agencies, said Moscow had a positive view of how the operation was conducted in Oleshky, as well as of the coordination between the two countries’ human rights commissioners.
A Ukrainian official, however, told the AFP news agency that Russia reportedly refused an offer to extend the ceasefire after Kyiv’s Foreign Ministry proposed it. Neither side had announced an extension by Sunday night, and the pause ended with the question of what comes next unanswered.
Residents urged to remain vigilant
Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin urged residents to be vigilant as the expiry of the ceasefire neared on Sunday.
“I also strongly urge you not to visit the so-called ‘red zones’ — areas and settlements near the Dnipro [River],” Prokudin wrote on Telegram. “The intensity of Russian strikes there remains high, and the threat to life is extremely high.”
Residents in Kherson city, one of the remaining areas of the region still controlled by Ukraine, remained calm on Sunday, despite knowing that the quiet of the localised ceasefire would soon end.
“Don’t be afraid, keep holding on,” Oleksandr Knyha, head of the Mykola Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater, told the audience as he opened a concert.
Knyha is from Oleshky and used to commute from there to Kherson for work. He has not given up hope of returning home. “That’s also what keeps me here,” he told the Associated Press.
Fighting elsewhere
Elsewhere, Moscow and Kyiv continued air strikes, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying on Sunday that Russia continues to target Ukraine’s energy systems before winter.
Russian strikes on energy infrastructure in four regions overnight — Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi — cut electricity to hundreds of thousands of households, Zelenskyy said. Substations, transformers and power lines supplying homes were targeted, according to his account.
A Russian attack also killed three people, including a 13-year-old girl, in the Vinnytsia region, when a drone hit the grounds of a vocational school, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. Four others were wounded.
Russian drone attacks targeting Ukraine’s Kyiv region for a second consecutive day wounded a woman and damaged homes, energy infrastructure and a retail establishment, regional authorities said.
In its daily report on Sunday, Ukraine’s Air Force said Moscow’s forces attacked Ukraine with 433 drones overnight, of which 371 were destroyed or suppressed.
In Russia, meanwhile, authorities reported major damage to an industrial site following Ukrainian drone attacks on the Nizhny Novgorod region. More than 100 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the region east of Moscow, Governor Gleb Nikitin said on Sunday, and the attack sparked a blaze at the Kstovo oil refinery, according to Russian media reports.
Zelenskyy said Kyiv also struck a factory for missile components and air defence facilities in Russia’s southern Rostov region. “We are justly defending ourselves against Russian aggression and doing everything to reduce Russia’s capability to continue it,” he said.
The pause in Kherson held since Tuesday without violations, according to both Ukrainian and Russian officials. It allowed the two sides to de-mine roads and bring food, medicines and other supplies into Oleshky, Reuters reported.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Moscow’s forces have occupied most of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as the majority of territory in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, according to Al Jazeera.
Washington has continued to back Kyiv during the war, including a recently approved Patriot missile sale to Ukraine. US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine are set to resume this month, having been effectively frozen since the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in February, according to Free Malaysia Today.
What is confirmed is that the Kherson truce ended on Sunday night without an extension and without reported violations. What is not confirmed is whether fighting in the region will return at its previous intensity, or whether the Oleshky operation will lead to a wider pause. No new date for a renewed ceasefire has been announced.
