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The Ukrainian city of Oleshky, across Dnipro River from the southern city of Kherson which is occupied by Russia, has become “a hell on earth”, according to Ukrainians familiar with conditions there.

Accounts of the dire conditions in the city emerged as the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, raised the situation in Oleshky at the UN general assembly in New York. A “Save Oleshky” banner was lifted at a Ukraine-Hungary Nations League football match on Friday.

In a statement published on Monday, Sybiha warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” and called for an immediate evacuation, accusing Russia of standing as “the only obstacle”.

“Russia is deliberately making life there impossible,” Sybiha said in an address during the general assembly. “They are starving them to death.”

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In messages shared with the Guardian, residents said they were down to one meal a day: soup without potato, made with courgette grown in what once were the flower boxes of the city’s apartment houses, sometimes with the addition of foraged purslane, an edible weed.

“We’re running out of everything,” said a resident early in the summer. “By August, the situation will be critical for us. And come autumn, we’ll definitely die. I’m already dying. I’m getting weaker by the day.”

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Ukrainian officials say attempts to drop food by drones have done little to help: the supplies are seized by Russian soldiers and in at least one case the intended recipient was arrested.

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A 74-year-old man was digging out a cellar that had been flooded with mud after Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam in 2023, looking for stored food. Refusing to allow the soldiers into the cellar he was excavating, he was murdered by the [Russian] soldiers.

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Despite the horrific conditions in the city, Ukrainian officials believe the occupying forces are dragging their feet with the evacuation of the remaining civilians in order to discourage a Ukrainian counterattack.

“The Russians are afraid that an offensive [against Oleshky] will start from Kherson city and they are just keeping people, civilians, as human shields,” said Hasanenko.

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In a text message, another resident said simply: “All supplies are running out.”

“A week ago, the orcs [a Ukrainian term of abuse to describe Russian soldiers] came into people’s yards and dug up all the potatoes, onions, and garlic.

“They took all the food supplies from the elderly women. When one of the grandmothers started shouting, they replied that people ‘soon to be living in heaven’ like them should subsist on nothing but water.”

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