Supplies are being flown over occupied Oleshky – a lifeline for trapped civilians surviving on grass and weeds

Verity Bowman

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Verity Bowman is The Telegraph’s Foreign and Global Health Security Reporter, covering conflict, human rights abuses, global development and international health issues, with a particular focus on Ukraine. She previously worked as a News Reporter at the Guardian and was named on the Press Awards' 30 Under 30 list in 2024.

Published 15 October 2026 6:00am BST

On Ukraine’s front lines, drones are the deadliest weapons in Kyiv’s arsenal, hunting Russian soldiers one by one with chilling precision.

But across the Dnipro River, the same machines have been given a very different mission: keeping trapped civilians from dying of starvation.

Since March, Ukrainian drones have been flying food and medicine into occupied Oleshky, on the river’s left bank, where residents are surviving on grass and weeds.

The town is less than three miles from Kherson, a city battered by…