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Road between Kyiv and Chernihiv reopens, regional military governor says

05 April 2022 22:28 (UTC +04:00)

The road between Kyiv and the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv has reopened, the Chernihiv regional military governor said Tuesday, APA reports citing CNN.

"Yesterday we resumed the route [between Chernihiv and Kyiv], thanks to the Operational Command North, to the military. There is a direct connection between Kyiv and Chernihiv now. We will open a few more routes, as the traffic is very high," said Viacheslav Chaus, head of the Chernihiv regional administration, in remarks on national television.

Russia's military announced a pullback from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions following a meeting last week between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul.

"Chernihiv and especially the villages around Chernihiv need humanitarian aid," Chaus said. "People are free to leave. We have not set restrictions on entry yet, but I have asked residents of the region and Chernihiv itself not to hurry to come back, because Chernihiv is limited in resources — electrical cables are damaged, there is no water supply. There is no need to come back home now. Let us put things in order in the city, in the cities nearby, and then it will be time to come back."
The discovery of murdered civilians in areas retaken by the Ukrainian military from the Russians has sparked outcry, particularly after evidence came to light of a massacre in the Kyiv suburb in Bucha. Chaus warned that evidence of possible war crimes would surface in the Chernihiv region.

"A lot of settlements were destroyed in our region. Mostly these are settlements near the city of Chernihiv, where the enemy lived in our houses, and our people were in basements, they were tortured and killed," he said. "These are in the settlements of Nizhyn and Pryluky districts, the situation there is also critical."

Chaus added, "many innocent children were killed. [There were] moral, psychological traumas … The day before yesterday, I was in Yahidne, a village 10 to 15 kilometers (six to nine miles) from Chernihiv. People sat in basements there, they were rarely let out. The children wrote the words of the anthem of Ukraine on the walls at night there … It's awful."