America’s ambassador to the United Nations says the Oleshky ceasefire belongs to one person. “I have to give just my hats off to the First Lady,” Ambassador Mike Waltz said in a television interview Sunday, “who not only drove a ceasefire in Oleshky, which is in one of the most contentious and hard fought areas, but humanitarian aid is going in, people are coming out.”
Waltz described a tight operation. “It was a very small team around the First Lady,” he said. “She drove that deal personally with two sides that, as you’ve seen, really hate each other and will barely talk.”
It did not come easy. The two sides “backed out of the deal, I’m told, time after time after time again,” Waltz said, “but through her persistence, she got it done. It’s getting implemented right now, and you’re going to have American media in there documenting and verifying it.” On X, he added: “It was because of @FLOTUS’s persistence that this ceasefire happened.”
The White House announced last week that Mrs. Trump, serving as the exclusive intermediary between Russia and Ukraine, secured a localized ceasefire so aid could reach the front-line city and its mostly elderly residents could leave through a safe passageway. She built that channel through her earlier work reuniting Ukrainian children with their families.
Career diplomats talked about Oleshky for years. The First Lady got both sides to sign, and now the trucks are moving. President Trump said it best: “What she wants to do is save children.”
