Slavutych, a northern town near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, was occupied by Russian forces, but flash grenades and gunfire failed to disperse unarmed protesters in its central square on Saturday. The crowd demanded the release of Mayor Yuri Fomicev, who had been captured by Russian troops. Attempts by Russian troops to quell the growing protest failed, and Fomicev was released on Saturday afternoon by his captors. It was agreed that the Russians would leave the city if those who had weapons handed them over to the mayor with an exemption for those who had shotguns. Fomichev told protesters that the Russians had agreed to withdraw “if there are no [Ukrainian] military in the city “. The agreement reached, the mayor said, was that the Russians would search for Ukrainian soldiers and weapons and then leave. A Russian checkpoint outside the city would remain. The incident underscores the struggle that Russian forces faced even where they had military victories. Slavutych, a population of 25,000, is located just outside the so-called exclusion zone around Chernobyl – which in 1986 was the site of the worst nuclear disaster in the world. The factory itself was occupied by Russian forces immediately after the start of the February 24 invasion. “The Russians opened fire in the air. They threw flash grenades at the crowd. But the inhabitants did not disperse, on the contrary, more of them appeared “, said Oleksandr Pavlyuk, governor of the Kiev region where Slavutych is sitting. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry claimed that Russia was “trying to intensify the activities of sabotage and reconnaissance groups in Kyiv in order to destabilize the socio-political situation, to disrupt the system of public and military administration.” Western officials said Vladimir Putin had planned to occupy the Ukrainian capitals within days of the announcement of his “special military operation” on February 24, but met with unexpectedly harsh resistance. While the occasional eruption is heard in Kyiv from fighting in the west of the city, the center has been quiet for most of the last fortnight. “At first they wanted blitzkrieg, 72 hours to take control [of] “Kyiv and much of Ukraine, and everything collapsed,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and chief negotiator in talks with Russia, in an interview in Kyiv. “They had poor business planning and realized that it was beneficial for them to encircle cities, cut off the main supply routes and force people there to run short of food, water and medicine,” he said, describing the siege of Mariupol. as a sperm tactic of psychological terror and exhaustion. However, Podolyak expressed skepticism about a Russian Defense Ministry statement on Friday that Moscow’s forces would now focus mainly on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. “Of course I do not believe it. They have no interests in Donbass. “Their main interests are Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and the south – to occupy Mariupol and close the Sea of Azov; we see them regrouping and preparing more troops for the mission,” he said.
