Border between Ukraine and Belarus —
Dmytro had not seen his wife Larisa for 1,711 days. he was counting.
Waiting near the border between Ukraine and Belarus, his nervous eyes were glued to the horizon, searching for a bus carrying Larisa and others fleeing the occupied southern Ukrainian town of Oreshki.
When the couple, both 54, finally reunited on Saturday afternoon, Dmytro didn’t hold back. He kissed Larisa again and again and took her in his arms with such determination that he could never let her go.
Hundreds of people and many pets evacuated from frontline cities have returned to Ukraine under a ceasefire called for by Pope Leo XIV and helped negotiate by first lady Melania Trump.
Larisa’s lean physique, which had lost a third of her weight during the occupation, seemed almost lost in Dmytro’s hands. But she held her head high, her deep-set blue eyes shining with joy.
When asked how things were going, Larisa talked about the people who are still suffering. “Everyone in this country is having a hard time. There are many people in the same situation as me. There are people in different situations, some in worse situations. We are waiting for it all to end, for peace, for victory,” she told CNN.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced the arrival of the evacuees on Telegram and thanked President Trump for his cooperation in mediation.
“And I thank all the people around the world, all the journalists, all the political and civil leaders and all the stakeholders who drew the world’s attention to the situation in Oreshki and to the real humanitarian catastrophe in the territory of Ukraine temporarily occupied by Russia. When the world pays attention, people are saved,” he said.
The first lady said in X that “Oreshky proved that it is possible to lift humanity out of war.”
Ukraine’s ombudsman Dmytro Rubinets traveled to Oreshkiy to personally escort the displaced, becoming the first senior Ukrainian official to openly visit Russia and Russian-controlled occupied territory since the start of the war.
After crossing the border, Rubinets told CNN in an interview that although the operation was extremely difficult, he hopes it will serve as inspiration for the future.
“We now have a unique and positive experience of how to negotiate with the Russian side with Melania Trump as the coordinator,” he said.
“Currently there are many similar villages that have the same problems with food and medicine. Our idea is to continue, but it does not depend only on Ukraine,” he told CNN, adding that he spoke with Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratva in Oreshki on Friday.
Malnourished and no medicine
Dmytro, whose last name cannot be published for security reasons, was a soldier in the Ukrainian army who put Larisa in danger when Russia occupied her hometown of Oreshki in southern Ukraine.
The couple managed to get their daughter out, but Larisa worried that if she tried to leave, she would be picked up at a Russian military checkpoint during “filtration” – a humiliating and often violent interrogation that Ukrainians found under Russian occupation must undergo before being allowed to leave the country to areas still under Ukrainian control.
There she remained, hoping for a miracle. On the contrary, her life became a nightmare.
The town suffered major flooding after the nearby Nova Kakhovka dam collapsed in 2023, possibly caused by a Russian explosion.
Intense fighting in the region over the next few years caused further destruction, and the humanitarian situation has worsened in recent months. Ukrainian authorities reported that the town ran out of food and other supplies in September, cutting off access to electricity, gas, medicine and other necessities. According to reports at the time, people lived by eating grass and weeds.
Evacuees who spoke to CNN on Saturday said there had been no food deliveries to Oreshky since the summer. One woman said she had not eaten bread in over a year and was living on vegetables she had planted earlier this year (mainly tomatoes and cucumbers).
Andrii Zhdenko, head of the Chernihiv Regional Hospital, was on standby with his staff at the border, providing medical assistance to evacuees. He told CNN that the effects of long-term malnutrition will be a major concern, explaining that evacuees must be fed carefully because they have been starving for long periods of time and consuming too much food too quickly can be dangerous.
“There are people who are injured, there are people who have suffered strokes, there are people who have limited mobility,” he said, adding that everyone at the hospital was happy to welcome the Ukrainian national home. “The whole staff wanted to be here. People have suffered so much there. It’s inhumane.”
“I’ve never felt so good in my life,” Oleksandr, another evacuee, told CNN in an interview after getting off the bus on Saturday.
“I felt like I’d come out of hell,” he said. “I didn’t go out at all…Where we were, where we lived, we couldn’t get food. We just ate what people left in their apartments, canned food and pickles and things like that.”
Despite the ceasefire being set to expire on Sunday, some residents did not want to go to Ukraine and decided to remain in Oreshki. Ukrainian and Russian authorities said humanitarian aid had been provided.
Another group chose to go to Russia. Lantratova said on Saturday that these evacuees were received in a temporary accommodation facility in Simferopol, Crimea.
According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based conflict monitoring organization, about 40% of Oreshky’s pre-war population of around 24,000 people managed to flee to Ukrainian-controlled territory in the early stages of the fighting, when it was still possible. Since then, thousands of people have fled, but many remain unable or unwilling to flee.
Zhanna Ptakhova and her daughters Elizaveta and Daria Palyi were among those who succeeded when it was still possible.
But Ptakhova’s husband, as well as Elizaveta and Daria’s father, remained in Oreshki. He intended to take care of the house until it was safe for them to return.
But that’s not happening. “The situation was terrible. There was no electricity, no gas, no heat. But he is a man with golden hands,” Ptakova told CNN.
“He transformed a house adapted to modern civilian life into one suitable for a primitive lifestyle. He built a stove, kept chickens to feed himself, planted a garden and survived there by his own efforts,” she said.
The family was reunited for the first time in three years. “I found my daughters right away, even on the bus, among other people,” said Mihailo Palyi.
Access routes to Oreshki are heavily mined and strewn with debris from drones and vehicles, making it impossible to cross the Dnipro River directly into Ukrainian-controlled territory.
This made the journey long and scary. After a two-day mine clearing operation concluded on Thursday, those seeking to leave gathered on Friday and traveled through occupied Crimea, Ukraine, to Anapa in Russia’s Krasnodar region.
The evacuees then took a flight from Anapa airport to Gomel, Belarus, then took a bus to Ukraine, Russian Defense Ministry and Ukrainian officials said. Once they crossed the border and were reunited with their loved ones, the bus convoy set off again. Strangers lined the roads for miles, waving Ukrainian flags.
