Russian attacks resume in Kherson region as Oleshky ceasefire ends

Russian forces resumed attacks in Ukraine's Kherson region on Monday after a six-day local ceasefire around the occupied town of Oleshky ended, with the regional governor saying 16 locations had been hit by artillery, drones and aircraft since the truce lapsed, Belgian broadcaster HLN reported.

During the truce, Ukrainian regional officials, police, the Ukrainian Red Cross and volunteers used the rare pause to reach civilians on the Ukrainian-held side of the Dnipro river who had been cut off for up to two years, the regional administration said. In all, 180 people were evacuated from riverside communities and the city of Kherson, including 23 children, according to the regional administration; about 140,000 people remain in the Ukrainian-held part of the region.

An Associated Press team used the ceasefire to reach Kozatske, a riverside village in what Ukrainian officials call the "kill zone", less than two kilometres from Russian-held territory. Resident Nataliia Diadiuk, 53, said she had marked her gate with a white towel to signal to Russian drone operators that she was a civilian, and described drinking rainwater, burning firewood for heat, and going without aid for nearly two years until the ceasefire. Neighbour Oleksii Shavokin, 54, said his house burned down in a mortar attack in early 2023, and that he now eats once a day, having lost 30 kilograms.

With the ceasefire over, residents of such villages again face drones, artillery, glide bombs and airdropped mines, though many said they would not leave, either because they could not afford to start over or would not abandon where they grew up.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that Russia was continuing to target Ukraine's energy infrastructure before winter, with overnight strikes hitting substations, transformers and power lines in the Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi regions, leaving hundreds of thousands of families without power. Separately, a Russian drone strike on a vocational school in Vinnytsia region killed three people, including a 13-year-old girl, and wounded four others, including two five-year-old girls and a 16-year-old boy, Ukraine's state emergency service said.

Ukraine's air force said Russian forces attacked the country with 433 drones overnight into Sunday, of which 371 were destroyed or suppressed; Russian drone attacks also continued for a second consecutive day on the Kyiv region, injuring a woman and damaging homes, energy infrastructure and a retail site, regional authorities said.