At the same time, in Kiev, the Ukrainian Ministry of Transport began requisitioning buses from motor transport enterprises all over the city and the surrounding towns and suburbs, summoning their drivers to work late on Saturday night and preparing them to travel toward Pripyat under police escort. At 11:25 p.m. they received the Ukrainian Council of Ministers’ order to move. By 3:50 a.m., five hundred vehicles had already arrived at the city limits, with five hundred more reaching Chernobyl town less than a half hour later. Before dawn, a column of vehicles some twelve kilometers long had
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