Oct 29 (Reuters) - Russia and Ukraine said on Thursday that demining operations around the Russian-held town of Oleshky in southern Ukraine had been completed and that an operation to bring aid and allow residents to leave was ready to begin.
Efforts have been underway for several weeks to organise a relief operation for the acutely deprived town's residents, which Russian forces seized soon after Moscow's February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbour.
Both sides have praised US first lady Melania Trump for helping broker a truce in a town where at least one resident who escaped said those remaining feared death by starvation.
Yet any sense of wider relief in a war now stretching beyond 4-1/2 years was rapidly dispelled by a series of attacks on Ukrainian cities, including a strike on the main train station in the southeastern city of Dnipro that killed 14 people.
The ceasefire is confined to the area around the town – opposite the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson on the other side of the Dnipro River.
"Demining operations of routes have been completed for the humanitarian mission in Oleshky," the two sides said in virtually identical statements issued by Yana Lantratova, Russia's human rights commissioner, and Dmytro Lubinets, her Ukrainian counterpart.
"The humanitarian convoy is ready for departure."
The convoy would head for the district hospital and residents wishing to leave would be permitted to go within a specific time frame. Aid packages would then be distributed, the statements said.
The operation aims to address a crisis in a town marooned inside a war zone since 2022. But it is also part of a diplomatic dance where both sides want to show US President Donald Trump that they back his peace efforts, albeit for different reasons.
Lantratova, Russian human rights commissioner, said she was taking four journalists from the conservative US outlet Newsmax to the area. Lubinets made no reference to specific reporters.
PUTIN SAYS MOSCOW IS MAKING PEACE EFFORTS
President Vladimir Putin told a gathering with African nations in Moscow that relief supplies would begin reaching civilians on Thursday and Friday, "with the support, incidentally, of the first lady of the United States".
Lubinets extended Kyiv's "special thanks" to someone who was "personally devoting her time and attention to the humanitarian mission and assistance to civilians in Oleshky".
Trump has cast Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as an obstacle to peace while praising Putin, who said on Thursday that Russia was "working on issues relating to a possible peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis itself".
Although Russia, like Ukraine, denies targeting civilians, strikes on trains and other civilian infrastructure have become increasingly common as Ukraine's stocks of air defence missiles have dwindled. Civilian deaths have also increased in Russia.
Although US-mediated peace talks are due to resume next month in Abu Dhabi after a long pause, the two sides are far apart when it comes to terms for ending the war.
But both recognise the ability of Trump, who has another two years in power left regardless of the outcome of US midterm legislative elections next month, to affect the conflict.
Russia still hopes that Trump can pressure Kyiv into agreeing a deal that meets many of its conditions, such as full Russian control of Ukraine's Donbas region and a bar on Ukraine joining the NATO defence alliance.
Kyiv wants to ensure that US intelligence sharing continues along with full access to Elon Musk's recently disrupted battlefield communications system, Starshield, and that European-bought US military hardware, including Patriot interceptor missiles, continues to flow.
KHERSON CEASEFIRE DUE TO CONTINUE UNTIL SUNDAY
The truce applies only to Oleshky and the wider Kherson region, which has suffered years of near-daily drone and artillery attacks. Some 1,500 of the town's prewar population of 24,000 people are believed to live among the ruins, under regular shellfire amid severe shortages of food and medicine.
Ukraine has long accused Russia of refusing to let aid in or people out. Russia says it is Ukrainian mines on the approach roads and Ukrainian shelling that have prevented the delivery of aid or the safe evacuation of residents.
By the middle of Thursday, neither Ukraine nor Russia had reported violations of the ceasefire, due to last until Sunday.
Residents wishing to leave and return to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government are expected to exit via Russia-controlled Crimea before crossing into southern Russia and being flown to Belarus from where they will be able to cross the border into Ukraine.
(Editing by Kevin Liffey, Ron Popeski and Stephen Coates)
