Russian troops have left Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant after weeks of occupation, officials in Kyiv said Thursday, according to AFP.
"There are no longer any outsiders on the territory of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant," Ukraine's state agency in charge of the Chernobyl exclusion zone said on Facebook.
Earlier in the day, the state nuclear company Energoatom said Russian troops began leaving the station and other exclusion zones, which they had occupied since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.
"This morning, the invaders announced their intentions to leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant," Energoatom said on Telegram.
Russian troops "marched in two columns towards the Ukrainian border with Belarus" and a "small number" of Russian forces remain in the station, it said.
"There is also evidence that a column of Russian soldiers who are besieging the town of Slavutych is currently being formed to move towards Belarus," the company added.
Slavutych houses the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
The confirmation comes a day after a US defense official said that Russian forces have begun to pull out of the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power site.
"Chernobyl is (an) area where they are beginning to reposition some of their troops -- leaving, walking away from the Chernobyl facility and moving into Belarus," the US official said. "We think that they are leaving, I can't tell you that they're all gone."
After capturing Chernobyl, Russian forces also captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility after hitting it with artillery fire, setting it ablaze.
There were also reports of artillery shells damaging a nuclear research facility in the city of Kharkiv, though there was no "radiological consequence".