Kherson Residents Return to Streets After Five-Day Ceasefire

For the first time in months, the skies over Kherson remained clear of drones, allowing residents to walk freely through the city center. The change came during a five-day ceasefire that ran from Oct. 27 to Nov. 1. The truce, negotiated by First Lady Melania Trump and Pope Leo XIV, included a portion of southern Ukraine. It ended Sunday night, Nov. 1.

The agreement provided a brief window for normalcy in a region where Russian FPV drones had hunted civilians since 2024. Locals described the weekend as a return to pre-war routines. Olena Soboleva, 21, walked down the street to meet her friend Anna Herasimenko, also 21. They joined families strolling with children and shoppers buying supplies at a cafe. Soboleva visited a salon and applied burgundy nail polish, noting that the streets felt full of life again.

The primary objective of the pause was to facilitate evacuations from Oleshky, a town across the Dnipro River from Kherson. Russian forces occupied Oleshky in 2022 and mined the surrounding land, limiting the flow of food and medicine. Families reported that residents survived on pickles and boiled weeds. During the ceasefire, hundreds of residents left the town on buses bound for northern Ukraine. Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, credited Melania Trump with ensuring the truce held.

The city had endured Russian occupation for several months in 2022 until local partisans aided Ukrainian soldiers in retaking it. Since then, anti-drone mesh nets have covered highways and streets to protect citizens from explosives. During the break in fighting, cars gathered near the Greek-style monument at the city’s gateway. Svitlana Vorobiova, a retired police officer, drove in from a safer city to photograph her children at the site. She brought her son, who had not visited his hometown in four years.

Volodymyr Mykolaienko, 66, a former mayor of Kherson, used the quiet days to visit his father’s grave in a sector usually filled with drones. He was released from a Russian prisoner of war camp last year after being arrested in early 2022 during the occupation. Mykolaienko said he was able to pray and tell his father about the city’s condition. At a busy bus stop, oncology nurse Olena Yehorova acknowledged the relief the pause provided, though she noted that residents still walk with caution and expect attacks to resume at any time.