By NEBI QE­NA and YURAS KAR­MANAU | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russ­ian troops left the heav­i­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed Cher­nobyl nu­clear site ear­ly Fri­day af­ter re­turn­ing con­trol to the Ukraini­ans, au­thor­i­ties said, as res­i­dents in parts of east­ern Ukraine braced for re­newed at­tacks and await­ed blocked sup­plies of food and oth­er hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­lief.

Ukraine’s state pow­er com­pa­ny, En­er­goatom, said the pull-out at Cher­nobyl came af­ter sol­diers re­ceived “sig­nif­i­cant dos­es” of ra­di­a­tion from dig­ging trench­es in the for­est in the ex­clu­sion zone around the closed plant. The In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency said it could not in­de­pen­dent­ly con­firm the ex­po­sure claim.

In what would be the first at­tack of its kind, if con­firmed, the gov­er­nor of Rus­sia’s Bel­go­rod re­gion ac­cused Ukraine of fly­ing he­li­copter gun­ships across the bor­der on Fri­day morn­ing and strik­ing an oil de­pot.

The de­pot run by Russ­ian en­er­gy gi­ant Ros­neft is lo­cat­ed about 35 kilo­me­tres (21 miles) north of the Ukraine-Rus­sia bor­der. The he­li­copter at­tack set the fa­cil­i­ty ablaze, and two peo­ple were in­jured, ac­cord­ing to a Telegram post by Bel­go­rod gov­er­nor Vy­ach­eslav Glad­kov.

“The fire at the oil de­pot oc­curred as a re­sult of an airstrike from two he­li­copters of the armed forces of Ukraine, which en­tered the ter­ri­to­ry of Rus­sia at a low al­ti­tude,” the gov­er­nor wrote on the mes­sag­ing app.

It was not im­me­di­ate­ly pos­si­ble to ver­i­fy the claim or im­ages that were cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia of the al­leged at­tack. Rus­sia has re­port­ed shelling from Ukraine be­fore, in­clud­ing an in­ci­dent last week that killed a mil­i­tary chap­lain, but not an in­cur­sion of its air­space.

Else­where, Ukrain­ian forces have re­tak­en the vil­lages of Slo­bo­da and Lukashiv­ka, which are south of the be­sieged north­ern city of Cherni­hiv and lo­cat­ed along one of the main sup­ply routes be­tween the city and Ukraine’s cap­i­tal, Kyiv, ac­cord­ing to Britain’s De­fense Min­istry.

Ukraine has al­so con­tin­ued to make suc­cess­ful but lim­it­ed coun­ter­at­tacks to the east and north­east of Kyiv, the min­istry said.

Russ­ian forces have sub­ject­ed both Cherni­hiv and Kyiv to con­tin­ued air and ground-launched mis­sile strikes de­spite Moscow of­fi­cials say­ing Tues­day they planned to re­duce mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty in those ar­eas.

West­ern of­fi­cials said there were grow­ing in­di­ca­tions Rus­sia was us­ing its talk of de-es­ca­la­tion in Ukraine as cov­er to re­group, re­sup­ply its forces and re­de­ploy them for a stepped-up of­fen­sive in the east­ern part of the coun­try.

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy warned that Russ­ian with­drawals from the north and cen­ter of the coun­try were just a mil­i­tary tac­tic to build up strength for new at­tacks in the south­east.

“We know their in­ten­tions,” Ze­len­skyy said in his night­ly video ad­dress to the na­tion. “We know that they are mov­ing away from those ar­eas where we hit them in or­der to fo­cus on oth­er, very im­por­tant ones where it may be dif­fi­cult for us.”

“There will be bat­tles ahead,” he added.

Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian ne­go­tia­tors planned to re­sume talks via video on Fri­day, five weeks in­to a con­flict that has left thou­sands dead and dri­ven more than 4 mil­lion refugees from Ukraine. There seemed lit­tle faith that the two sides would find agree­ment on their re­spec­tive de­mands any time soon.

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin said con­di­tions weren’t yet “ripe” for a cease-fire and he wasn’t ready for a meet­ing with Ze­len­skyy un­til the ne­go­tia­tors do more work, Ital­ian Pre­mier Mario Draghi said af­ter a Thurs­day tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with the Russ­ian leader.

Fol­low­ing a plea from Ze­len­skyy when he ad­dressed Aus­tralian Par­lia­ment on Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son said that his coun­try would send mine-re­sis­tant ar­moured per­son­nel car­ri­ers to Ukraine.

He said Fri­day the four-wheel dri­ve Bush­mas­ter ve­hi­cles, specif­i­cal­ly re­quest­ed by Ze­len­skyy, would be flown to Eu­rope but did not say how many would be de­liv­ered or when.

“We’re not just send­ing our prayers, we are send­ing our guns, we’re send­ing our mu­ni­tions, we’re send­ing our hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, we’re send­ing all of this, our body ar­mour, all of these things, and we’re go­ing to be send­ing our ar­moured ve­hi­cles, our Bush­mas­ters, as well,” Mor­ri­son said.

In the en­cir­cled strate­gic port city of Mar­i­upol, Russ­ian forces on Thurs­day blocked a con­voy of 45 bus­es at­tempt­ing to evac­u­ate peo­ple af­ter the Russ­ian mil­i­tary agreed to a lim­it­ed cease-fire in the area. On­ly 631 peo­ple were able to get out of the city in pri­vate cars, ac­cord­ing to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.

Russ­ian forces al­so seized 14 tons of food and med­ical sup­plies in a dozen bus­es that were try­ing to make it to Mar­i­upol, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Iry­na Vereshchuk said.

The city has been the scene of some of the worst suf­fer­ing of the war. Tens of thou­sands of res­i­dents man­aged to get out in the past few weeks by way of hu­man­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dors, re­duc­ing the pop­u­la­tion from a pre-war 430,000 to an es­ti­mat­ed 100,000 by last week. But con­tin­ued Russ­ian at­tacks have re­peat­ed­ly thwart­ed aid and evac­u­a­tion con­voys.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency said it had been in­formed by Ukraine that the Rus­sians forces at Cher­nobyl had trans­ferred con­trol of the site of the world’s worst nu­clear dis­as­ter to the Ukraini­ans in writ­ing. The last Russ­ian troops left Cher­nobyl ear­ly Fri­day, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment agency re­spon­si­ble for the ex­clu­sion zone said.

En­er­goatom gave no de­tails on the con­di­tion of the sol­diers it said were ex­posed to ra­di­a­tion and did not say how many were af­fect­ed. There was no im­me­di­ate com­ment from the Krem­lin, and the IAEA said it was seek­ing more in­for­ma­tion.

Russ­ian forces seized the Cher­nobyl site in the open­ing stages of the Feb. 24 in­va­sion, rais­ing fears that they would cause dam­age or dis­rup­tion that could spread ra­di­a­tion. The work­force at the site over­sees the safe stor­age of spent fu­el rods and the con­crete-en­tombed ru­ins of the re­ac­tor that ex­plod­ed in 1986.

Ed­win Ly­man, a nu­clear ex­pert with the U.S.-based Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists, said it “seems un­like­ly” a large num­ber of troops would de­vel­op se­vere ra­di­a­tion ill­ness, but it was im­pos­si­ble to know for sure with­out more de­tails.

IAEA Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Rafael Grossi was in the Russ­ian en­clave of Kalin­ingrad on Fri­day for talks with se­nior of­fi­cials there about nu­clear is­sues in Ukraine.

In ad­di­tion to con­cerns about Cher­nobyl, nine of Ukraine’s 15 op­er­a­tional re­ac­tors are cur­rent­ly in use, in­clud­ing two at the Russ­ian-con­trolled Za­por­izhzhya fa­cil­i­ty, the IAEA said.

Ear­ly this week, the Rus­sians said they would sig­nif­i­cant­ly scale back mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in ar­eas around Kyiv and the north­ern city of Cherni­hiv to in­crease trust be­tween the two sides and help ne­go­ti­a­tions along.

But in the Kyiv sub­urbs, re­gion­al gov­er­nor Olek­san­dr Palviuk said on so­cial me­dia Thurs­day that Russ­ian forces shelled Ir­pin and Makariv and that there were bat­tles around Hos­tomel. Pavliuk said there were Ukrain­ian coun­ter­at­tacks and some Russ­ian with­drawals around the sub­urb of Brovary to the east.

At a Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary check­point out­side Kyiv, sol­diers and of­fi­cers said they don’t be­lieve Russ­ian forces have giv­en up on the cap­i­tal.

“What does it mean, sig­nif­i­cant­ly scal­ing down com­bat ac­tions in the Kyiv and Cherni­hiv ar­eas?” asked Brig. Gen. Va­leriy Em­bakov. “Does it mean there will be 100 mis­siles in­stead of 200 mis­siles launched on Kyiv or some­thing else?”

NA­TO Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Jens Stoltenberg said in­tel­li­gence in­di­cates Rus­sia is not scal­ing back its mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in Ukraine but is in­stead try­ing to re­group, re­sup­ply its forces and re­in­force its of­fen­sive in the Don­bas.

“Rus­sia has re­peat­ed­ly lied about its in­ten­tions,” Stoltenberg said. At the same time, he said, pres­sure is be­ing kept up on Kyiv and oth­er cities, and “we can ex­pect ad­di­tion­al of­fen­sive ac­tions bring­ing even more suf­fer­ing.”

The Don­bas is the pre­dom­i­nant­ly Russ­ian-speak­ing in­dus­tri­al re­gion where Moscow-backed sep­a­ratists have been bat­tling Ukrain­ian forces since 2014. In the past few days, the Krem­lin, in a seem­ing shift in its war aims, said that its “main goal” now is gain­ing con­trol of the Don­bas, which con­sists of the Donet­sk and Luhan­sk re­gions, in­clud­ing Mar­i­upol.

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Yuras Kar­manau re­port­ed from Lviv, Ukraine. As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists around the world con­tributed to this re­port.