A Ukrainian researcher says first lady Melania Trump may have walked straight into a trap set by the Kremlin, after her role brokering a humanitarian ceasefire in the occupied city of Oleshky drew both praise and accusations that Russia exploited the arrangement for propaganda.

Petro Andrushchenko, head of the Center for the Study of the Occupation, reacted angrily after a Russian drone strike hit a train station in Dnipro — roughly 160 miles from Oleshky — on October 29. The attack killed 14 civilians and wounded at least 14 more as they waited on the platform.

"While screaming to the world how much he wants Melania Trump to mediate saving 1,500 people in Oleshky, Putin continues to kill civilians 10 minutes away from my house, continues to bomb Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia," Andrushchenko told the Daily Beast.

"Now Putin will be a 'humanitarian' for moving people from Oleshky to Russia," he said. "The Oleshky operation is truly the greatest victory of Russian propaganda."

The first lady hosted an event at the White House on Thursday attended by delegations from both Russia and Ukraine, where each side praised her efforts to advance peace. She said she had "acted immediately" to secure the ceasefire in Oleshky and described herself as the "exclusive intermediary" between the two hostile nations. The event lasted about 15 minutes, and the first lady did not take questions from the press.

According to the first lady, nearly 800 people were evacuated from Oleshky, a frontline Russian-occupied city in the Kherson region that has been trapped in a war zone since 2022. The city sits across the Dnipro River from the regional capital of Kherson, and its residents have endured months of severe food shortages.

Andrushchenko was even blunter about the propaganda surrounding the operation.

"Using Donald Trump and Melania as their façade, Russian propaganda is building a campaign in order to blame Ukraine, put the 'genocide,' hunger in Oleshky on our shoulders," he said.

"They are allowing American journalists in; they have brought a bunch of dubious reporters from Moscow. Not sure how Ukraine is supposed to react."

President Volodymyr Zelensky has awarded the first lady the Order of Princess Olha, 1st Class — a Ukrainian state decoration — for her humanitarian work supporting Ukraine, including efforts to bring Ukrainian children home.

The Daily Beast reports that Ukrainians hold mixed feelings about Melania Trump's involvement in the Oleshky evacuation. The truce helped people escape the city even as Russian strikes continued elsewhere, including in Dnipro. It may have set a precedent for further frontline ceasefires, but critics said it also handed Russia a propaganda coup. The report also raised concerns that relocating Ukrainians out of occupied territory contributed to ethnic cleansing.

"Melania Trump brokered a ceasefire without a single independent monitor in the room, and Russia used that gap to stage exactly the picture it wanted the world to see," Lyudmyla Yankina of the Ukrainian human rights group Civil Fortis told the Daily Beast.

It remains to be seen whether any future evacuations from occupied territory would include independent monitors, and how Kyiv and Washington respond to the criticism surrounding the Oleshky arrangement.

Separately, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff drew criticism from U.S. lawmakers and Ukraine for describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "humanitarian" following Russia's release of U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard on October 21.