A winter of hunger looms for residents trapped in Russian-occupied city in Ukraine

Food and medical supplies have been scarce for months in Oleshky, which sits on the Dnipro River that separates Ukrainian forces from the city’s Russian occupiers. There’s no electricity, heat or running water. Roads leading from town are mined and dotted with burned-out cars. Menacing drones buzz overhead.One desperate resident watched the front-line city slide further toward a humanitarian crisis as its trapped population dwindled to fewer than 2,000 people. She decided it was time to escape via what's been dubbed “the road of death.”So the 40-year-old former hairdresser walked -- for 20 kilometers (12 miles), along the partially mined road — fearing that “every step could have been my last," she said.Once a city of about 24,000, Oleshky was captured by Moscow’s forces on the first day of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its buildings were shelled and burned, and its infrastructure damaged. Further calamity struck in June 2023 when floodwaters inundated the city after th