Russia just let the Kherson truce collapse and the drones are already flying again
3 hours ago · 2 November 2026Share
Kherson city council building in Kherson, Ukraine. File photo. 7777777kz · CC BY 3.0
The longest ceasefire of Ukraine's five-year war is over.
Russia refused to extend it.
The truce covered Oleshky and the Kherson region around it, land Russia has occupied since 2022. It ran six days, from 27 October to 1 November. It ended at 10:59pm Ukraine time, a few hours ago.
Dmytro Lubinets runs Ukraine's Parliament human rights office. He confirmed the truce had ended. He says quote "an important step in our joint humanitarian efforts".
So who got this deal done? Melania Trump, the US First Lady, brokered it. Pope Leo XIV pushed Russia to agree too.
And here's what it actually did. About 2,000 civilians were trapped in Oleshky when the truce started. Hundreds got out, many of them elderly or disabled. On the last day alone, 167 people left, including 22 children and 21 people who could barely move.
Neither side broke the truce while it held. One Ukrainian lawmaker called it the biggest de-escalation since the war began.
But Russia would not extend it.
A Ukrainian official told the news agency AFP that Kyiv's Foreign Ministry offered to extend the truce. Russia said no. Moscow hasn't explained why. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's press secretary, only said Russia had a positive view of how the Oleshky operation went.
So Russia is praising a ceasefire it then chose to end.
And here's the part that matters. Ukrainian military officers say Russia used the calm for its own plans. Russian forces sit across the Dnipro river from Oleshky. Officers say they spent the pause moving in new troops, bringing up ammunition, and flying spy drones to map Ukrainian positions.
So while civilians were escaping, Russia was reportedly getting ready for what comes next.
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Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite data showing normalized differential moisture index of irrigated fields in the Kherson region, Ukraine, acquired September 13, 2021. Tomchenko Olha · CC BY 4.0
The moment the truce ended, Russia bombed power stations in four Ukrainian regions overnight. Hundreds of thousands of homes lost electricity. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's President, confirmed it. A Russian drone also hit a vocational school in the Vinnytsia region. Three people died, including a 13-year-old girl. Four more were wounded. Drone strikes hit the Kyiv region for a second day running, wounding a woman and damaging homes, power sites and a shop.
Ukraine's Air Force says Russia fired 433 drones overnight. 371 were shot down or jammed.
Ukraine hit back. Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region shot down more than 100 Ukrainian drones, says Governor Gleb Nikitin. But one got through and set fire to the Kstovo oil refinery. Zelenskyy says Ukraine also bombed a missile-parts factory and air defence sites in Russia's Rostov region.
Oleksandr Prokudin runs the Kherson region. He's telling people to stay away from areas near the Dnipro river. He says the danger there is still very high.
There's one more thing. Ukraine's air raid alert app got hacked. It sent out fake radiation-threat warnings. The air force says there is no radiation threat. Ukraine's Center for Strategic Communications blames Russia for the hack.
Zelenskyy also made an offer. He says Ukraine will stop bombing Russian oil refineries, something Donald Trump has demanded, if Washington sends Patriot missile interceptors in return.
And there's a bigger picture here. US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine are due to start again this month. They've been frozen since the US and Israel bombed Iran in February.
Russia still holds about a fifth of Ukraine. That's Crimea, most of the Donbas, and large parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. This was the first time either side had agreed to stop fighting in one place, for a set number of days, with a name on it.
Melania Trump had said she hoped Oleshky would become "the starting point for lasting peace". Pope Leo XIV said he hoped the pause would build momentum for talks.
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