Aid ceasefire starts near Kherson, missiles strike Kyiv

A local ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia began at 3 a.m. Tuesday to let an aid mission reach Oleshky, a town under Russian occupation in southern Ukraine. The pause is scheduled to run through Saturday or longer. Negotiators for both countries and their militaries issued separate statements confirming the truce had started.

The mission into Oleshky was arranged by U.S. first lady Melania Trump, whose office said she met with U.N. officials briefed on conditions there and then led talks with civilian negotiators from Russia and Ukraine. Supplies planned for delivery include doctors, medicines, food and water, after which evacuation corridors would open.

Oleshky sits in the partly occupied Kherson region, about 340 miles southeast of Kyiv, across the Dnipro River from the regional capital. Russian forces took the town on the first day of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Floodwaters from a dam collapse reached the town in June 2023. The U.N. says as many as 2,000 residents are unable to leave because of explosive mines and drone attacks, and food and medicine are running low.

The truce is meant to clear the way for a new round of U.S.-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine expected next month, after more than four and a half years of war.

Missiles struck the capital anyway. Minutes after 3 a.m. Tuesday, ballistic missile explosions shook Kyiv and air alerts sounded across parts of the country. Late Monday, Russian ballistic missiles damaged grounds at a university in Kyiv, killing one person and wounding 10, city officials said. In Kharkiv, attacks late Monday killed two people and injured four.

In an online post after those strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote, "It is important that the world sees that Russia is showing nothing but a desire to kill and continue waging war." Previous attempts at ceasefires have failed amid deep mistrust between the two sides.