East SOS Statement on the Humanitarian Blockade of Temporarily Occupied Oleshky

For more than four months, the temporarily occupied city of Oleshky in Kherson Oblast has been under a humanitarian blockade. The city is facing critical shortages of food, medicine, and drinking water, while electricity and gas supplies are unstable or unavailable. At the same time, leaving the city for those who remain there is extremely dangerous due to mined roads and ongoing drone attacks, while the wounded and those killed cannot be evacuated. The occupation authorities are also blocking any assistance from outside.

East SOS considers the deliberate deprivation of civilians of life-sustaining resources and the opportunity to evacuate to be a grave violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions by the occupying power, the russian federation.

The Foundation is systematically documenting testimonies about the situation in Oleshky and calls on the Government of Ukraine and the international community to work towards opening a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from the city and neighboring hromadas (communities), prioritizing children, older people, and those who are ill or injured. We also emphasize the need to support people who have left such cities, villages, and hromadas, as well as to document the blockade, the deprivation of civilians of life-sustaining resources, and obstruction of evacuation as possible war crimes.

East SOS continues to monitor the situation and stands ready to contribute to humanitarian response in Oleshky within the Foundation’s available capacity and subject to security conditions.

The full text of the statement is available below.

The international community’s silence or growing acceptance of such blockades only encourages their repetition in other hromadas.