Zelensky Gives Melania Trump Ukraine's Top Women's Honor as Russian and Ukrainian Delegations Head to White House Thursday

Since Melania Trump announced on Oct. 23 that she had helped arrange a pause in fighting around the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky, the story has moved from a humanitarian ceasefire to a formal diplomatic stage. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has now awarded her the Order of Princess Olha, 1st Class, and delegations from both warring countries are due at the White House tomorrow.

The award

The presidential decree credits Mrs. Trump with a "significant personal contribution to humanitarian support for Ukraine." It also cites her human rights and charitable work for Ukrainian civilians and children, including efforts to bring home children taken to Russia.

The order is Ukraine's highest award for women. Earlier recipients include EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Reports differ on the decree's date. Some put it on Nov. 2, others on Nov. 4.

What the ceasefire did

The pause around Oleshky ran for six days, from Oct. 27 into the weekend. It was described as the longest local pause in fighting since the February 2022 invasion.

Mrs. Trump's office says the pause allowed aid deliveries and the evacuation of nearly 800 people to Ukrainian-controlled territory. Oleshky sits on the eastern bank of the Dnieper in the occupied Kherson region. It had about 24,000 residents before the war, and only a fraction remain.

Conditions there were dire. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said in September that some residents had been reduced to eating grass and weeds amid shortages of food, medicine, clean water and electricity.

Ukraine's ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets and his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova travelled into Oleshky together last week, a rare joint appearance by officials from the two sides.

Who brokered what

The White House says Mrs. Trump "independently initiated engagement between the two warring nations and successfully secured a ceasefire." It calls this "an unprecedented diplomatic initiative by an American First Lady."

Both Russian and Ukrainian officials have thanked her publicly. Neither side has described what she actually did or how far her involvement went.

Ukrainian media, citing diplomatic sources, report that Ukrainian lawmaker Davyd Arakhamia handled informal contact between the White House and Moscow during the ceasefire. Arakhamia has not disputed that account and has confirmed he will attend Thursday's meeting.

Ukraine also accused Russian forces of using the pause to reinforce their positions in the area. Moscow has not addressed that accusation in the material at hand.

Thursday's meeting

The delegations are Arakhamia, who leads Zelensky's Servant of the People faction, and Lubinets for Ukraine. Lantratova and Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, will represent Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Mrs. Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks on the Oleshky ceasefire at 11:00 a.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 5.

The White House has not said what the event will include. "There are important meetings ahead," Lubinets wrote on social media as he left for the U.S.

Dmitriev and Arakhamia are both veterans of high-level negotiations. Meetings at that level are not normally convened through an initiative led by a First Lady.

Eugene Goncharov, policy director at the American Coalition for Ukraine, told RFE/RL he welcomed the ceasefire as proof that Russia can agree to local pauses when it chooses. "We don't have high expectations" for anything broader, he said, arguing that Russia could end the war at any time.

The war outside the ceasefire

The fighting did not stop elsewhere. Russia launched 310 drones overnight into Wednesday, 81 of them jet-powered, according to Ukraine's air force. The air force said it downed or suppressed 272.

Kyiv and surrounding regions lost power and water for hours. Mykhailo Yatsuk of the Institute of Water Problems and Land Reclamation told the Kyiv Independent it is the most serious water outage in the capital since the war began, and he expects it to worsen in winter.

On Monday, Russian guided bombs hit a former school and a nearby shelter in Komyshuvakha, a village in the Zaporizhzhia region, where residents were waiting for humanitarian aid. Zelensky said the death toll has risen to 40 and that 30 more people may be under the rubble. He wrote that there has been "very little reaction from the world."

What comes next

The White House event comes ahead of trilateral talks among Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 10-11. Peskov said longtime Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky will lead Moscow's delegation. Officials from the U.S., Germany, France, Britain, NATO and the EU are also meeting in Brussels this week on postwar security arrangements.

Whether Thursday's talks move beyond Oleshky and into the larger negotiations is the open question. The agenda has not been released.