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Russian troops pull back from Chernobyl and Kyiv
Summary
On 30 March 2022, reports of Russian forces moving into Belarus coincided with a new round of peace talks and continued fighting in Mariupol and eastern Ukraine.
Was Russia starting to abandon its push towards Kyiv? On 30 March 2022, several reports pointed that way, even as fighting continued elsewhere in Ukraine and diplomats prepared to talk again.
Movement towards Belarus
According to the Pentagon, about a fifth of the Russian forces around Kyiv had begun moving north towards Belarus. The move was seen as a strategic step that would let Russian units resupply and regroup for possible deployment to other parts of Ukraine. The UK Ministry of Defence said any such deployment would most likely be to the east of the country.
A U.S. official separately said that Russian forces had begun withdrawing from the Chernobyl area and had moved into Belarus. On the same day, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk called on Russia to leave the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and for Russian troops occupying the former nuclear plant to pull out.
Later accounts put the Chernobyl episode in a longer frame. Russian forces had seized the whole Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant area on 24 February, the first day of the invasion, after entering from Belarus. It was reported on 7 March that around 300 people were trapped at the plant. Later, on 31 March, it was reported that most of the Russian troops occupying the area had withdrawn, as the Russian military abandoned the Kyiv offensive to focus on operations in eastern Ukraine.
Talks to continue online
The movements came a day after Ukrainian and Russian delegations held face-to-face talks in Turkey for the first time in two weeks. On 30 March, after that round had ended, Ukrainian negotiator Davyd Arakhamia said the delegations would resume their talks online on 1 April.
Fighting in the east and south
The fighting did not stop. Ukrainian forces repelled several Russian attacks in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In Mariupol, Ukraine said Russian artillery and aircraft had targeted a Red Cross hospital.
The human cost of the invasion was also measured on 30 March. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said more than four million Ukrainians had fled the country since the invasion began on 24 February.
Events of the previous day
The reports of 30 March followed a series of developments on 29 March. A shell struck a temporary Russian military camp near Belgorod, 25 km from the Russia–Ukraine border. Russian authorities reported at least four injuries and said the shell had been fired from Ukrainian territory. Ukraine denied firing it and attributed the strike to an error on Russia's part.
In a prisoner swap that day, Roman Hrybov, the border guard who had defied a Russian warship's order to surrender Snake Island over the radio, was freed. Initial reports had wrongly suggested that the 13 border guards on the island had died.
Abroad, the UK's National Crime Agency seized the 58.5 metre superyacht PHI on the River Thames in London after its Russian oligarch owner, who was not named, was sanctioned by the British government. The U.S. also deployed 200 marines from Marine Air Control Group 28, 10 F/A-18 Hornet jets and an unspecified number of C-130s to Lithuania as part of NATO's response to Russian military aggression in Eastern Europe.
What 30 March showed
The day's reports described a Russian shift away from the area around Kyiv, with the east named as the likely destination for redeployed forces, while talks were due to continue online and attacks continued in Mariupol, Donetsk and Luhansk.
