He said that more than 200 civilians had been killed in the city since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, and that 120,000 remain in the city of an estimated pre-invasion population of nearly around 280,000.
Chernigiv’s damaged city centre after a Russian air raid in Ukraine. Photo: AP
Russian forces also took control of a town where workers at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant live, the governor of Kyiv region said on Saturday, and fighting was reported in the streets of the besieged southern port of Mariupol.
After more than four weeks of conflict, Russia has failed to seize any major Ukrainian city and on Friday Moscow signalled it was scaling back its military ambitions to focus on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists in the east.
A Ukrainian couple near the remains of a building destroyed by Russian shelling. Photo: dpa
However, intense fighting was reported in a number of places on Saturday, suggesting there would be no swift let-up in the conflict, which has killed thousands of people, sent some 3.7 million abroad and driven more than half of Ukraine’s children from their homes, according to the United Nations.
Russian troops seized the town of Slavutych, which is close to the border with Belarus and is where workers at the Chernobyl plant live, the governor of Kyiv region, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, said.
He added that the soldiers had occupied the hospital and kidnapped the mayor. The reports could not be independently verified.
Slavutych sits just outside the so-called exclusion zone around Chernobyl – which in 1986 was the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster – where Ukrainian staff have continued to work even after the plant itself was seized by Russian forces soon after the start of the February 24 invasion.
01:43
Odesa falls silent as troops fortify Ukrainian city and residents flee fearing Russian advance
Authorities in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, have announced a new 35-hour curfew in the city. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the curfew will run from 8pm local time on Saturday to 7am on Monday, with local residents allowed to leave their homes only to get to a bomb shelter.
Klitschko said that shops, pharmacies, gas stations and public transport will not be operating during the curfew.