Russia’s invasion marks the first time that occupying a nuclear plant was part of a nation's war strategy, said Rebecca Harms, former president of the Greens group in the European Parliament, who has visited Chornobyl several times.
“It was very dangerous to act in this way,” said Maksym Shevchuck, the deputy head of the state agency managing the exclusion zone.
Workers kept the Russians from the most dangerous areas, but in what Semenov called the worst situation he has seen in his 30 years at Chornobyl, the plant was without electricity, relying on diesel generators to support the critical work of circulating water for cooling the spent fuel rods. WATCH: Daniele Hamamdjian on Russia's new attacks.Canada sanctions Vladimir Putin's daughters.What's happening in Ukraine today: Live updates.
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“I was afraid they would install something and damage the system,” he said in an interview. He worked 35 days straight, sleeping only three hours a night, rationing cigarettes and staying on even after the Russians allowed a shift change. They held personnel still working at the plant at gunpoint during a marathon shift of more than a month, with employees sleeping on tabletops and eating just twice a day.Įven now, weeks after the Russians left, “I need to calm down," the plant's main security engineer, Valerii Semenov, told The Associated Press. With scientists and others watching in disbelief from afar, Russian forces flew over the long-closed plant, ignoring the restricted airspace around it. A close inspection of their trenches was impossible because even walking on the dirt is discouraged.Īs the 36th anniversary of the April 26, 1986, disaster approaches and Russia’s invasion continues, it’s clear that Chornobyl - a relic of the Cold War - was never prepared for this. Thousands of tanks and troops rumbled into the forested Chornobyl exclusion zone in the earliest hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, churning up highly contaminated soil from the site of the 1986 accident that was the world's worst nuclear disaster.įor more than a month, some Russian soldiers bunked in the earth within sight of the massive structure built to contain radiation from the damaged Chornobyl nuclear reactor. Ukrainian officials worry they were, in effect, digging their own graves. Here in the dirt of one of the world’s most radioactive places, Russian soldiers dug trenches.
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