Russia and Ukraine both praised US first lady Melania Trump on Thursday for helping to broker a truce around the acutely deprived Russian-held Ukrainian town of Oleshky, as efforts began to bring in food and medicines and enable hundreds to leave.
The Oleshky operation aims to address a growing crisis in a town marooned inside a war zone since 2022 – but 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.
Yana Lantratova, Russia’s human rights commissioner, said she was taking four journalists from the conservative US outlet Newsmax to the area as her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Lubinets, also headed for Oleshky.
President Vladimir Putin told a summit 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, for his part, 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 emphasised on Thursday that Russia was “working on issues relating to a possible peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis itself”.
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