Kyiv: Russian troops left the heavily contaminated Chernobyl nuclear site early on Friday after returning control to the Ukrainians, authorities said, as eastern parts of the country braced for renewed attacks and Russians blocked another aid mission to the besieged port city of Mariupol.
Ukraine's state power company, Energoatom, said the pullout at Chernobyl came after soldiers received significant doses of radiation from digging trenches in the forest in the exclusion zone around the closed plant. But there was no independent confirmation of that. In what would be the first attack of its kind, if confirmed, the governor of the Russian border region of Belgorod accused Ukraine of flying helicopter gunships into Russian territory early Friday morning and striking an oil depot.
The depot, a facility run by Russian energy giant Roseneft about 35 kilometers (21 miles) from the border, was set ablaze by the attack that left two people injured, according to a post by Vyacheslav Gladkov on Telegram. The fire at the oil depot occurred as a result of an air strike from two helicopters of the armed forces of Ukraine, which entered the territory of Russia at a low altitude, the governor wrote on the messaging app.
It was not immediately possible to verify the claim or images that were circulating on social media of the alleged attack. Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces have retaken the villages of Sloboda and Lukashivka to the south of Chernihiv and located along one of the main supply routes between the city and Kyiv, according to Britain's Defense Ministry.
Ukraine has also continued to make successful but limited counterattacks to the east and northeast of Kyiv, the ministry said. Both Chernihiv and Kyiv have been subjected to continued air and missile strikes despite Russian claims of reducing activity in these areas.
There are growing indications Moscow is using its talk of de-escalation in Ukraine as cover to regroup, resupply its forces and redeploy them for a stepped-up offensive in the eastern part of the country.