Six-Day Kherson Truce Ends Without Extension as Fears of Renewed Fighting Grow

The six-day localised truce between Russia and Ukraine, limited to the Kherson region, ended on Sunday night. Neither side reported violations, but there was also no sign of an extension.

It was the longest multi-day truce between the two countries, limited to Ukraine's eastern Kherson region. The pause allowed hundreds of besieged residents of the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Oleshky to be evacuated in a rare joint operation between Kyiv and Moscow.

The ceasefire in front-line Oleshky and the surrounding area was reached after mediation efforts by United States First Lady Melania Trump and with the involvement of Pope Leo XIV. It was set to expire at 10:59pm Ukraine time (20:59 GMT).

On Sunday, Ukraine's military said it evacuated 167 more people from threatened areas of the southern Kherson region, including 22 children and 21 people with limited mobility requiring special assistance.

Ukraine's General Staff wrote on Telegram that units of civil-military cooperation of the 'South' group of forces, working with local authorities, evacuated 167 civilians to safer points in the Kherson region.

An estimated 2,000 civilians were in Oleshky when the temporary truce took hold. They were offered the choice to evacuate to Kyiv-controlled territory, to territory occupied by Russia, or to remain in the city with replenished food and medical supplies.

Melania Trump said on social media that the ceasefire across Oleshky and the surrounding Kherson region gave residents freedom to move, access to food, clean water and medicine, and a renewed sense of dignity without the constant threat of attack. 'Let Oleshky become the starting point for lasting peace,' she said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, quoted by Russian news agencies, said Moscow had a positive view of how the operation was conducted in Oleshky, as well as of the coordination between the two countries' human rights commissioners.

A Ukrainian official, however, told the AFP news agency that Russia reportedly refused an offer to extend the ceasefire after Kyiv's Foreign Ministry proposed it.

Elsewhere, Moscow and Kyiv continued air strikes. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia continues to target Ukraine's energy systems before winter; overnight attacks on power infrastructure in four Ukrainian regions cut electricity to hundreds of thousands of households.

Ukraine's State Emergency Service said a Russian attack killed three people, including a 13-year-old girl, in the Vinnytsia region when a drone hit the grounds of a vocational school; four others were wounded. Russian drone attacks on the Kyiv region for a second consecutive day wounded a woman and damaged homes, energy infrastructure and a retail establishment, regional authorities said.

In its daily report on Sunday, Ukraine's Air Force said Moscow's forces attacked with 433 drones overnight, of which 371 were destroyed or suppressed. Meanwhile, more than 100 Ukrainian drones were shot down over Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow, Governor Gleb Nikitin said on Sunday; Russian media reported the attack sparked a blaze at the Kstovo oil refinery.

Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin urged residents to be vigilant as the expiry of the ceasefire neared on Sunday. He wrote on Telegram that he strongly urged people not to visit the so-called 'red zones' near the Dnipro River, where the intensity of Russian strikes remains high and the threat to life is extremely high.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Moscow's forces have occupied most of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as the majority of territory in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.