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Russian troops take workers’ town Chernobyl
STORY: This is Ukrainian Slavutych on Saturday (March 26). The city, home to workers at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant, has just been seized by Russian soldiers – according to Oleksandr Pavlyuk, governor of the Kiev region. The chant you can hear is residents yelling “Go home” – after unfurling a large Ukrainian flag. Pavlyuk said the Russians opened fire in the air and threw stun grenades to disperse the crowd. Reuters was unable to independently verify that report. After more than four weeks of conflict, Russia has not taken a single major Ukrainian city. On Friday (March 25), it said it was scaling back its military ambitions to focus on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists in the east. But intense fighting reported in a number of places suggests the conflict will not end soon. During a visit to Poland on Saturday, US President Joe Biden describes Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “butcher”. He said he wasn’t sure if Moscow was changing its strategy to focus on the eastern Donbass region, despite stalling in some areas. Back in Ukraine, the mayor of the beleaguered southern port city of Mariupol said the situation there remains critical. Vadym Boichenko reported that street fighting g took place in the center. The city has been devastated by weeks of Russian fire. Outside a damaged apartment building, two residents, who did not give their names, described how they lie in a cold basement at night, wondering how they will survive – and during the day they bury bodies around the building.’ Yes, people just die. for what? They fight because they can’t decide how to divide power, and we suffer. What kind of a life is this? Is that the old age we were hoping for?” Speaking to the Doha Forum in Qatar on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy compared the situation in Mariupol to the devastation the combined Syrian and Russian forces have wrought on the city of Aleppo.
