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A localised ceasefire brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky went into effect early on Tuesday,
The local pause in fighting started at 3 am to allow an aid mission into Oleshky in southern Ukraine later this week.
According to her office, Melania Trump led talks with civilian negotiators from Russia and Ukraine after meeting with UN officials who briefed her on the situation in the town.
The aid mission is planned ahead of a new round of US-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine expected next month aimed at ending the war after more than 4½ years of fighting.
Up to 2,000 people are stranded in Oleshky with dwindling food and medicine. They are unable to leave because of explosive mines and drone attacks in the area, according to the UN.
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators as well as the militaries of the two countries confirmed in separate statements that the ceasefire had begun.
Announcing last Friday that she had brokered the ceasefire, Melania Trump said civilian officials from both Russia and Ukraine would visit residents in their homes and “determine the level of assistance they require”.
“Residents who wish to evacuate will receive coordinated support and transportation to their preferred destination. I anticipate some will want to go to Russia, and some to Ukraine,” she said.
Newsmax, a right-wing US cable network, has said it had been granted “exclusive television access” to accompany observers entering the city on Thursday.
Kyiv struck by wave of Russian strikes
Minutes after 3 am, multiple ballistic missile explosions shook Kyiv and air alerts sounded in multiple parts of the country.
A Russian strike damaged a major bridge spanning the Dnipro River in Kyiv, the city’s mayor said.
“A strike hit the Southern Bridge. Metro infrastructure on the bridge was also damaged,” Mayor Vitaly Klitschko wrote on Telegram, with city officials adding that train services across the bridge had been suspended.
Late Monday, the capital also came under attack, when Russian ballistic missiles damaged the grounds of a university in Kyiv, killing one person and leaving 10 injured, city officials said.
Moscow’s latest pummelling has damaged medical facilities in the capital, Klitschko said, adding that a “blast wave shattered the windows in (an) intensive care unit”.
“At another medical facility in the same district, windows were also shattered in two wards. Neither patients nor medical staff were wounded,” he said on social media.
In another attack, “a building in a non-residential area was also hit. According to preliminary reports, there is one fatality near one of the supermarkets in the area,” Klitschko said.
A strike near a dormitory belonging to one of Kyiv’s universities has shattered windows in the building, wounding a 20-year-old woman, Klitschko said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “Russian ballistic missiles struck the grounds of a university in Kyiv and the area around it –- effectively the campus, Kyoto Park, the area near a metro station, and residential buildings.”
“The missiles hit very crowded areas, and there is not a single military facility nearby. This was a strike directly on the city, on its infrastructure,” he said on social media.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, authorities said attacks late Monday killed two people and injured four.
“It is important that the world sees that Russia is showing nothing but a desire to kill and continue waging war,” Zelenskyy wrote in an online post shortly afterward.
Additional sources • AP, AFP