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Buses for Mariupol, withdrawal from Chernobyl
Summary
On 31 March 2022, Ukraine's efforts to evacuate civilians from a besieged city ran alongside reports of Russian troops leaving the Chernobyl zone.
What did Ukraine's government say it was doing for civilians in Mariupol on 31 March 2022? Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that Ukraine had sent buses to the city to evacuate its citizens, at a time when the siege of Mariupol was under way.
The announcement came a day after Vereshchuk made a separate demand about the north. On 30 March 2022, she called on Russia to withdraw from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and urged Russian troops occupying the former nuclear plant to pull out.
Chernobyl after the first day
Russian forces had captured the exclusion zone on 24 February, the first day of the invasion, entering from Belarus and seizing the whole area of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant by the end of that day. On 7 March, it was reported that around 300 people were trapped at the plant and unable to leave since its capture.
On 31 March, it was reported that most of the Russian troops occupying the area had withdrawn, as the Russian military abandoned the Kyiv offensive to focus on operations in Eastern Ukraine.
Two fronts, one day
The two threads showed different pressures on that date. In the south, Ukrainian officials were trying to move civilians out of Mariupol by bus. In the north, the call for a pullout from Chernobyl was followed, by the end of 31 March, by reports that most occupying troops had left the zone.
