Ex-Herson city council deputy: men of conscription age from Oleshky refused to go to Ukraine

Most men of conscription age from Oleshky in Kherson region did not evacuate to Ukraine.

This was written on Facebook by former Herson city council deputy Yuri Pogrebnoy after speaking by phone with former neighbors from Oleshky who had arrived in Ukraine.

According to him, his interlocutors are “completely broken and embittered people.”

“They don’t like Russia, but they don’t like Ukraine either, because they believe the Ukrainian authorities betrayed them and abandoned them in February 2022, did not save them during the flooding in June 2023, and for four years ‘their own Armed Forces of Ukraine’ shelled them from the right bank. What they say about Zelensky is, generally speaking, not for Facebook,” Pogrebnoy wrote.

He added that most of those who chose evacuation decided to go to Ukraine rather than to the Russian Federation. But this is due to personal circumstances, and many do not intend to stay long in the territories controlled by Kyiv.

“There are various reasons for this: young women mostly plan to leave for Europe with their children, while pensioners go to their children, if they are alive and have a roof over their heads. Most men of conscription age refused to go to Ukraine, since they have no desire to go and fight. Therefore they either went in the other direction or stayed in Oleshky,” Pogrebnoy said.

He also said that these people, who have known grief, “get irritated at the word ‘victory.'”

Meanwhile, Russian ombudsman Yana Lantratova stated that “far fewer than 750 people” left Oleshky. That was the figure previously cited by US First Lady Melania Trump. Lantratova noted that she had not counted the final number of evacuees.

“750 people were given the opportunity to leave. Just in case, we prepared that many places; a great many buses later drove back. Of course, far fewer than 750 people left. Moreover, to be honest, we simply had neither the time nor the opportunity to count people there; we did not count them head by head,” Lantratova said.

At the same time, neither Kyiv nor Moscow has so far officially reported how many residents of Oleshky were evacuated. Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said today that, in accordance with the agreements, neither Ukraine nor Russia can publish data on the number of evacuees or on how many people decided to go to each of the countries.

According to some data, more people went to Ukraine than to the territory of the Russian Federation. At the same time, most residents decided to stay in Oleshky, which is controlled by Russia, and Moscow evacuated some people even before the arrival of the humanitarian mission.

This morning, after the end of the truce, shelling resumed in Oleshky in Kherson region.