Russian troops left the heavily contaminated Chernobyl nuclear site early 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.
