A Russian soldier has been killed by radiation from the damaged Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine after his unit camped in a toxic forest, according to reports.
The soldier was part of a team that captured the power plant in the first days of the war before occupying the 20-mile exclusion zone around it.
They dug trenches into radioactive mud and their trucks kicked up radioactive dust as they drove along dirt roads, The Telegraph reports.
Russian forces have withdrawn from the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, although Ukrainian officials said some Russians were still in the radioactive "exclusion zone" around it.
Ukraine's Defence Ministry said: "The Russian occupiers have left the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
"Two key reasons: losses caused by the Ukrainian army and radiation exposure."
The Ukrainian state nuclear company said on Thursday most of the Russian forces that occupied the Chernobyl nuclear power station after invading Ukraine have left the defunct plant, and suggested radiation concerns had driven them away.
Though Russian troops seized control of Chernobyl soon after the February 24 invasion, the plant's Ukrainian staff continued to oversee the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel and supervise the concrete-encased remains of the reactor that exploded in 1986, causing the world's worst nuclear accident.
State-owned Energoatom said these workers had flagged earlier on Thursday that Russian forces were planning to leave the territory.
"The information is confirmed that the occupiers, who seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and other facilities in the exclusion zone, have set off in two columns towards the Ukrainian border with the Republic of Belarus," it said in a statement.
It said a small number of Russian troops remained at Chernobyl, but did not specify how many.
Russian forces have also retreated from the nearby town of Slavutych, where workers at Chernobyl live, it said.
