The situation in Oleshky in occupied Kherson Oblast is deteriorating under Russian occupation, and some villages in the region "no longer exist," Tetiana Hasanenko, the exiled head of Oleshky's military administration, told Radio Svoboda on April 3.
Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson Oblast up to the western bank of the Dnipro River in November 2022.
Russian forces still occupy the other side of the bank and carry out attacks against the western bank from the towns and villages they occupy on the eastern bank.
"Some villages of the community no longer exist on the map at all," Hasanenko told Radio Svoboda, describing constant shelling and a complete lack of essential services, like electricity, water, and gas.
Since the start of 2024, 21 civilians have been wounded and seven have been killed under Russian occupation, Hasanenko said, describing the situation as "simply catastrophic."
"These are not complete numbers, these are only those people we have become aware of," Hasanenko said. "Civilians are constantly dying."
Oleshky was also hit by Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on June 6, 2023, and suffered widescale flooding.
While Russia has claimed that 59 people died in floods caused by the dam explosion in the territory it controls, an Associated Press investigation discovered that in Oleshky alone, the number is at least in the hundreds.
Journalists talked to medical workers who kept records of the dead in Oleshky, a volunteer who buried the bodies, and Ukrainian informants who provided intelligence from the area to the Ukrainian Security Service as well as other residents, rescue volunteers, and recent escapees from the occupied area.
Ukraine's National Resistance Center put the number of flood victims in Oleshky at over 500. Rather than evacuating the population, Russian forces reportedly prevented locals in Oleshky from leaving and later confiscated humanitarian aid.
Anastasiya Gordiychuk
(Updated: )
