Kherson guns roar back to life as six-day truce in Ukraine collapses

The quiet is over. Strikes resumed in Ukraine's Kherson region on Monday morning, local authorities confirmed, ending a six-day humanitarian truce that had silenced the front line for the first time in years. Officials said Moscow hit a medical facility in Kherson city centre, and that a 62-year-old woman and a 73-year-old man were wounded when a Russian drone struck the car they were in.

Ukraine's General Staff accused Russian forces of using the pause to dig in — rotating units, widening anti-drone cover along roads and trucking in ammunition. "The enemy used the humanitarian pause to set up their positions," it said. The Kremlin didn't exactly deny it. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters it was "reasonable to assume" Ukrainian troops regrouped too, calling that "completely standard practice in such situations."

The ceasefire, brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump, was the longest since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. It let hundreds of people escape Russian-occupied Oleshky and the surrounding area, with emotional scenes on Saturday as evacuees reached northern Ukraine and met tearful relatives they hadn't seen in years. Russia's human rights ombudsman Yana Lantratova and Ukraine's Dmytro Lubinets oversaw the truce together, travelling into Oleshky and filming themselves talking with residents. Both thanked each other publicly and pushed for the model to be repeated elsewhere; Ukraine said it would back similar ceasefires nationwide.

The Kremlin killed that idea fast. Even while the truce held, Moscow branded Oleshky "an isolated case" with no bearing on the stalled peace process, and Peskov repeated on Monday that there were "no similar plans or initiatives." Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian air strikes never stopped during the pause, killing civilians and wrecking critical infrastructure.

Politics, not compassion, likely kept the guns silent. Commentators tied the truce to Melania Trump's involvement — violating it would have risked Moscow's carefully tended relationship with US President Donald Trump, who could sell the deal as a foreign policy win days before Tuesday's US midterms. "I understand why it's so important to create a 'success story' ahead of the elections," said Artyom Sheynin, a prominent figure on Russian state TV. Kyiv had its own reasons to play along: it still leans on US intelligence and American-made Patriot missiles to defend its skies.

Lantratova said the hundreds who stayed behind in Oleshky will get monthly humanitarian aid deliveries — another result, she said, of Melania Trump's mediation. But the troop rotations and resupply runs tell their own story: nobody is treating Oleshky as a blueprint. As Kherson came under fire again, Ukrainian drones hit energy facilities across four Russian regions, with residents in Samara reporting explosions and black smoke as an oil refinery was struck for the fifth time in a month.