Trapped in occupied Oleshky: Ukrainians face hunger, drones and landmines

Ukrainians suffering from food shortages are turning to weeds for sustenance in a town where bodies are reportedly eaten by dogs.

Kyiv, Ukraine – On the day of her 41st wedding anniversary, Vera Gulyaeva recalled her husband’s life and death.

The town in the Kherson region had already been occupied for more than four years, and its 2,000 remaining residents spent the last two and a half years without electricity, running water, natural gas or healthcare.

They had an orchid, a vegetable patch, five hens, a water well and a power generator that ran on the overpriced gas they occasionally bought from middlemen.

The bread-line attack left him with deep cranial wounds. She tried to get him to a hospital 80km (50 miles) away in the city of Skadovsk but failed as the ambulance ran over a landmine on the road.

She recovered his remains, had them cremated and returned home with his ashes.

Gulyaeva left behind all her family photos, friends and neighbours – several of whom have since died.

After four decades of teaching in the elementary school she had attended as a child, she still cannot fathom “how people can kill other people”.

A resident who fled the town but remains in contact with some residents told Al Jazeera that people have been killed by Russian drones or landmines. The bodies left out in the open are eaten by feral dogs.

“The choice that Russia leaves every day to civilian residents – stay and starve to death, leave and risk getting blown on a landmine,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, wrote on Telegram on Saturday.