Russians camped in Chernobyl radioactive forest for month: ‘They ignored our warning’ | Abroad

Russian troops entered the nuclear exclusion zone on February 24, which extends for a radius of 30 kilometers around the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. The area is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world, but the Russians did not seem so. to hurt.

With their tanks and bulldozers they stirred up the dust from the ground and started digging in the polluted ground. Although the background radiation is not much of a threat and can be compared to flying in an airplane at high altitude, there are invisible hot spots where the radiation level is a thousand times higher.

A whole network of trenches and bunkers appeared and so was the infamous Red Forest. It is named after the color the trees took after the nuclear disaster in 1986, when the forest absorbed much of the radiation and died. It is still one of the areas with the most ionizing radiation in the world. And more than 90 percent of the radioactivity is said to be in the ground.

“We warned them not to do that, it was dangerous, but they didn’t listen,” said the head of safety at the former nuclear power plant, Valeriy Simyonov, in an interview with the newspaper. ‘The New York Times’. “They just barged in and did whatever they wanted.”

For example, a Russian soldier in a garbage dump is said to have picked up a source of Cobalt-60 (a relatively unstable radioactive isotope of cobalt) with his bare hands. According to Simyonov, he exposed himself to so much radiation in a few seconds that the Geiger counter (which measures radiation) went crazy. It is not clear what happened to the soldier after that.

The Russian troops may have exposed themselves to harmful doses of radioactivity through their reckless actions. Although no major leaks were found, measurements from satellites show that radiation at the site is currently higher than before the Russians invaded.

According to international nuclear experts, no cases of radiation sickness were reported among the Russian soldiers, but potential health problems and cancers sometimes develop years later.

When they withdrew from the area, the Russians blew up another bridge in the exclusion zone and are said to have laid numerous anti-personnel mines and booby traps around the former nuclear power plant. Two Ukrainian soldiers stepped on a mine last week, according to the Ukrainian government.