Pope Leo XIV calls for new peace steps after Oleshky civilian truce

A local truce for civilians

Russian and Ukrainian forces agreed a temporary halt in fighting around Oleshky, a town on the left bank of the Dnipro that Russian forces have held since November 2022. The truce took effect on 27 October and was due to end late on 1 November, and both AGI and Il Fatto Quotidiano describe it as the longest since the war began in February 2022. AGI puts the town's population at about 24,000 before the war and just over 2,000 now. Polsat News, citing information from the United States, reported that about 2,000 people, including 50 children, were left without food or drinking water, while mined access roads and Russian drones made evacuation harder. The truce allowed aid to reach the town and let residents leave.

The pope's appeal

Leo XIV made his appeal at the Angelus in St Peter's Square on Sunday, 1 November, the feast of All Saints. He urged the parties to turn the cooperation behind the truce into more dialogue and new concrete peace initiatives, and he said:

“We do not tire of building peace, in the most important situations as well as in the ordinary moments of everyday life.”

Before the Angelus he had telephoned Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, and Polsat News reports that in mid-October he had already discussed an evacuation with both leaders. AGI noted that the pope had moved first on Oleshky, before the US first lady became involved.

Mediation and aid deliveries

Il Fatto Quotidiano describes Melania Trump as the main mediator of the agreement, and AGI reports that her involvement followed the pope's own calls to Putin and Zelensky. On Saturday, 31 October, she wrote on X that Oleshky showed humanity could rise above the war. Zelensky said the truce showed that steps toward de-escalation are possible when Russia is put in a position where it has to take them. On Thursday, 29 October, a convoy reached Oleshky carrying the Russian commissioner for humanitarian affairs, Yana Lantratova, and her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Lubinets, and the distribution was filmed for the US broadcaster Newsmax at Melania Trump's request.

Monsignor Luis Marín de San Martín, the papal almoner and prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, ended a four-day mission in Ukraine during the night between 30 and 31 October. His delegation drove 2,800 km and visited 12 Latin and Greek Catholic charities in Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Brovary, Poltava and Fastiv, giving each one a gift from the pope. Rai put the aid it carried at two trucks.

Fears and what comes next

AFP sources cited by AGI feared that fighting would resume more fiercely once the truce ended. They said Russian forces on the opposite bank had reportedly used the lull to bring in new troops, move ammunition and watch Ukrainian positions with surveillance drones. Il Fatto Quotidiano carried evacuee accounts of food running out, including one 29-year-old who said that all the shops had closed and that people ate whatever they could find. A 40-year-old woman relayed her mother's account of food reaching hospital staff by ambulance until that stopped too. Leo XIV will celebrate Mass at the Verano cemetery in Rome on 2 November, the commemoration of all the faithful departed. From 8 to 15 November the Friars Minor run a Mission with the Poor in Rome, which the pope praised at the Angelus.