Mayor of Chernobyl workers' town says Russian forces have left

On Saturday, the Kyiv regional governor said Russian forces had taken control of the town just outside the safety exclusion zone around Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, where Ukrainian staff still manage the plant.

"They completed the work they had set out to do," Yuri Fomichev, the mayor of the northern town, said in an online video post. "They surveyed the town, today they finished doing it and left the town. There aren't any in the town right now." Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Fomichev, seated in front of two small flags of the European Union and Ukraine, added that he was working, and not cooperating with the Russians. Last week, the regional governor, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, had said Russian forces kidnapped the mayor. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which it calls a "special military operation", has devastated several Ukrainian cities, caused a major humanitarian crisis and displaced an estimated 10 million people, nearly a quarter of the population.