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“No Official U.S. Representatives Were on the Ground in Oleshky”: What Was Washington’s Actual Role in the Evacuation from Oleshky? ————————————————— Kateryna Lisunova, Ukrainian journalist based in Washington, D.C.: “We should be objective. Despite claims from the American side that they somehow brokered this deal or contributed to making it happen, there were no official American representatives on the ground in Oleshky. If we’re talking about people with American passports, there was only one Newsmax TV crew, consisting of a very small number of people. There were two camera operators, one journalist, and one interpreter. They brought this interpreter from Ukraine, who, I believe, works full-time for The New York Times in Ukraine. Everything was under the control of the russians. Every step the crew took was monitored by russian representatives. They were also told that they could only travel to Oleshky by first going to Moscow, then to Crimea, and finally from Crimea to Oleshky. This essentially constitutes a violation of Ukrainian law, which prohibits entering the occupied territories through russia. Nevertheless, the russians demanded that the TV crew travel through Moscow, which also meant taking a much longer route. There was also a proposal to bring them through Belarus. But there were no official representatives of the U.S. administration or anyone else representing the American government on the ground. And that also speaks to the level of fear. They claim this is a war that should be easy to end, yet they are afraid to show up at the scene in Oleshky. Nobody had the courage to come and help facilitate this evacuation. There were no independent third-party observers, such as representatives of the United Nations, the OSCE, or any other independent organization that could objectively monitor what was happening. And that’s why it’s very difficult for me to say what role the Trump administration, and Melania Trump personally, are actually playing in all of this. We’ve already seen several occasions when Melania Trump said she was looking after Ukrainian children. But then she made a very strange statement, claiming that there had been an exchange in which russian children were sent from Ukraine back to russia, while Ukrainian children were returned home from russia. Ukraine does not kidnap russian children. It’s a deeply confusing statement, and it makes it very difficult to understand what role Melania Trump is actually playing in this process, especially given that there was no official U.S. representative on the ground in Oleshky.”