There were raw emotional scenes as people evacuated from the devastated Russian-occupied city of Oleshky crossed from Belarus into the Ukrainian region of Chernihiv.

Families cried as they reunited with relatives they had not seen for years, with two sisters running and crying out as they embraced their father.

Some elderly residents were so weak they were carried on stretchers. They had been trapped in the frontline city without food, water and electricity, with many resorting to cooking garden weeds to survive.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked US First Lady Melania Trump for her efforts in brokering a local ceasefire that paved the way for their evacuation on Friday.

Upon their arrival, Dasha and Anya Palii sprinted across the tarmac screaming towards the bus carrying their father Mykhailo.

Their cries and their tears captured the sheer relief of three years of desperate worry, fearing they would never see him again.

Their mother Zhanna clasped Mykhailo’s face and stroked his forehead again and again, as if checking he was the same man she had left behind. He promised her, finally, they will now get married.

Tetiana and Volodymyr, an older couple carrying their cat, told the BBC they no longer have a home, after it was burned down in the first year of the war. They have been living in the abandoned house of a neighbour.

They said they instantly took the decision to leave but feared their journey could be disrupted. Now they have to work out where to go next and how to rebuild their lives.

Ukrainian military positions lie just 5km (3.1 miles) from Oleshky, but evacuees first had to travel to southern Russian, where they flew to Belarus, before finally being driven across Ukraine’s northern border on Saturday.

The oldest evacuee was 94 years old, while the youngest was one, according to Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman.

Zelensky said in a post on X that “all of them will receive the assistance they need. It is important that government agencies and all the regional and local authorities involved work effectively and help our people adapt.”

One evacuee, Liubov, told Reuters news agency: “Until we got on the buses, we were afraid of everything, we were so worried and nervous. Before that, we spent nights without sleeping, wondering how it would go, what would happen. But everything went well.”

Another said they had lost 20 kg in the last year, adding: “My strength left me.”

Valera, who did not give his last name, told the AFP news agency: “There was no bread. Nothing.”

“Lots of people planted vegetable gardens. We ate whatever was available. Well, thank God, we’re here now.”

Many bear the scars: the convoy includes as many ambulances as coaches. The impact of years caught between the frontlines is written on the weary faces of many of Oleshky’s residents, some hobbling on crutches, others needing wheelchairs.

They have a lot to come to terms with, not least having left the place they call home.

A humanitarian ceasefire took effect across the frontline region of Kherson on Tuesday, providing the first few days of peace in the area in four years, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Before the war, Oleshky was home to 24,000 people.

Conditions had become so desperate in Oleshky that not only was getting supplies into the city extremely difficult, but escape was highly dangerous because the routes out had been mined and subject to drone attack.

Bridges across the nearby River Dnipro have been destroyed and sources say the riverbank has been mined and is dangerous.

One resident who fled the city three weeks earlier told the BBC he had walked through 24km (15 miles) of minefields to get to safety.

The ceasefire allowed the road out of the city to be cleared of mines and humanitarian aid to be delivered.

Ceasefire measures will remain in place until the end of Sunday 1 November.

Residents had a four-hour window to leave before a convoy of 25 buses, with space for 750 people, left the town on Friday afternoon – along with ambulances for people with limited mobility.

Several hundred people are understood to have decided to stay in the war-torn city, despite widespread devastation and the lack of gas, electricity and running water.

Some of the older generation did not want to leave, one relative told the BBC.

Lubinets said on Friday morning that those who decided to stay “will receive all the necessary humanitarian assistance”.

He and his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova travelled to Oleshky together on Friday, setting off from Armiansk, in the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula.

Lubinets is the first Ukrainian official since the start of the war to visit Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

Zelensky praised him and his team for helping move evacuees out to safety.

The Ukrainian president also thanked those who had helped bring attention to the “true humanitarian catastrophe in Ukrainian territory temporarily occupied by Russia”.

The ceasefire has required close cooperation between Lubinets and Lantratova, which Lubinets said he carried out in the interests of saving lives.

But some in Ukraine have recoiled at the sight of him standing beside a representative of the Russian occupying power which has killed so many of the city’s residents and made life unbearable for the rest.

Russia said on Thursday that it had prepared “dozens of tonnes” of aid for the residents who do not wish to leave, including food, medicine, hygiene products and fuel for generators.

Additional reporting by George Wright