More than three months without food deliveries: residents of occupied Oleshky are surviving on their supplies
A sack of flour was sold for 200,000 rubles
In occupied Oleshky on the left bank of Kherson region, more than three months have passed since the last delivery of food and medicine on May 26. Residents are finishing their own supplies, using vegetable gardens, and selling or bartering food. It is practically impossible to leave the community, so the humanitarian situation continues to worsen.
DW reports on the situation of the residents. The head of the Oleshky City Military Administration, Tetyana Hasanenko, said she receives messages from the city every day.
One of the residents gave journalists a photo of a dish he called “Oleshky borscht.” It contained potato, beetroot, tomato, onion, zucchini and asparagus, and for sustenance they added barley groats and two eggs.
The man described how residents exchange food:
A mother traded 2.5 kilograms of sugar for 10 eggs. There’s no cabbage there either, but there’s still asparagus. Zucchini and asparagus are helping a lot right now.
A resident of Oleshky, Halyna, whose name was changed for safety reasons, says she last ate meat on New Year. Now her daily diet may consist of a small flatbread made from water and flour, apple jam and tea without sugar.
After her apartment was destroyed by shelling, the woman moved into an abandoned private house. During another shelling the roof there was damaged. There is no electricity or gas in the city, and people draw water from wells.
According to Halyna, residents mostly leave their homes between 7:00 and 9:00. At the local market they share news, sell their harvest and trade items from their supplies. The woman does not have her own garden, so neighbors share what they grow.
Food prices at the market have surged sharply. One kilogram of zucchini was being sold for about 1,000 rubles. Halyna described other prices as follows:
Today there were a couple of zucchinis — 1,000 rubles per kilogram. That is, roughly speaking, 500 hryvnias. Someone put a sack of flour up for sale — probably planning to leave the city. They sold it for 200,000 rubles, that’s about 2,000 dollars! To make you understand, it’s not so much about the prices as the critical situation. Because that money is just pieces of paper.
Eggs have also become scarce because there is not enough feed for poultry. In spring residents still kept chickens and pigs, but later began slaughtering animals they could no longer feed. Large livestock has almost disappeared.
For the whole city — one cow.
The ombudsman urged the Red Cross to secure the ceasefire needed to evacuate people from Oleshky. Previously, Ukrainian forces tried to deliver food and medicines to the temporarily occupied city using large drones.
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