A Ukrainian soldier has been pictured at Chernobyl after the surrounding district was re-taken as Russia was forced to retreat.
This morning officials confirmed that the northern Pripyat region was back under Ukrainian control, having been seized by Russia at the start of Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion.
Ukraine 's defence ministry posted today: "Yes, today on April 03, the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine took control of the district of Pripyat and the area of the State Border of Ukraine with the Republic of Belarus.
"We continue to perform combat duties! Together to victory! Glory to the DSHW! Glory to Ukraine!"
Late last week Ukraine said Russian occupiers had left the nuclear power plant because of heavy losses and radiation poisoning.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces said on Friday that several units of Russian forces had been withdrawn from the Chernobyl district and headed across the border with Belarus.
The Russian retreat was a significant victory for Ukraine, amid fears of a fresh nuclear disaster at the plant, where staff were held hostage and forced to keep working without proper rest.
It is the latest in a number of breakthroughs in the resistance against Russian invaders, with Putin's forces stepping down its assault on capital city Kyiv.
But retreating Russian forces have been accused of arbitrarily killing civilians "out of anger and just because they wanted to kill" by Ukraine's foreign minister.
It is the latest in a series of war crimes allegations against Putin's troops, who are also accused of using rape as a "weapon of war" amid sickening reports of women and girls being attacked.
On Friday The Mirror reported that a Russian soldier has been killed by radiation from the damaged Chernobyl nuclear plant after his unit camped in a toxic forest.
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, it is claimed.
Russian forces occupied the defunct power station after invading Ukraine on February 24, but Ukraine's state nuclear energy company, Energoatom, said on Thursday they had left the plant and were heading towards the border with Belarus.
"Russians were seen in the exclusion zone this morning," Yevhen Kramarenko, who heads the agency in charge of the exclusion zone, said in televised comments on Friday.
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.
Ukraine's foreign minister has said Russian troops executed civilians while withdrawing from regions "out of anger and just because they wanted to kill".
Dmytro Kuleba branded Russia "worse than Isis" (Islamic State), and said it is possible its military actions could amount to genocide.
Speaking to Times Radio, he said: "We understand they were killing civilians while leaving, while withdrawing, while staying there in this town of Bucha and also in other towns and villages in key regions, but also while withdrawing from them out of anger and just because they wanted to kill. There was no good reason for them. These were not guerrillas, they were not people opposing them.
"Russia is worse than Isis, full stop."
He added the situation in de-occupied regions, where looted houses and killed civilians have been reported, "ruins (him) inside".
He said: "It remains to be seen based on the evidence collected whether these crimes will qualify for the crime of genocide, but I would like to make it clear that since the very beginning of the aggression, we hear from Russia and from Russian President Vladimir Putin that he denies the rights of Ukrainians to have their own identity and have our own state, so in the end of the collection of all evidence, I do not exclude the possibility of genocide.
