Kara Anna and Inna Varenitsa, Associated Press Published on Wednesday, April 20, 2022, 6:08 AM EDT Last Updated on Wednesday, April 20, 2022, 6:08 AM EDT
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) – Here, in the soil of one of the most radioactive sites in the world, Russian soldiers are digging trenches. Ukrainian authorities are worried that they are actually digging their own graves.
Thousands of tanks and troops entered the afforested Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in the early hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, smashing heavily contaminated soil from the site of the 1986 crash, the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
For more than a month, some Russian soldiers lay in the ground in sight of a massive structure built to contain radiation from a damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Careful inspection of their trenches was impossible because even walking on the ground was discouraged.
As the 36th anniversary of the April 26, 1986, disaster approaches and the Russian invasion continues, it is clear that Chernobyl, a Cold War relic, was never prepared for this.
As scientists and others watched in disbelief from afar, Russian forces flew over the long-closed plant, ignoring the limited airspace around it. They kept staff still working at the plant under surveillance during a marathon shift of more than a month, with employees sleeping on countertops and eating only twice a day.
Even now, weeks after the Russians left, “I need to calm down,” the plant’s chief security engineer, Valery Semenov, told the Associated Press. He worked for 35 days, slept only three hours a night, distributed cigarettes, and stayed even after the Russians allowed a shift.
“I was afraid they would install something and damage the system,” he said in an interview.
Workers kept Russians from the most dangerous areas, but in what Semenov called the worst situation he has seen in his 30 years at Chernobyl, the plant was without electricity, relying on diesel generators to keep critical circulating cooling water running. of spent fuel rods.
“It was very dangerous to act in this way,” said Maxim Shevchuk, deputy head of the state agency that manages the exclusion zone. He was scared of it all.
Russia’s invasion is the first time the occupation of a nuclear power plant has been part of a national military strategy, said Rebecca Harms, former president of the European Parliament’s Green Group, which has visited Chernobyl several times. She called it a “nightmare” scenario in which “any nuclear power plant can be used as a pre-installed nuclear bomb.”
A visit to the exclusion zone, more desolate than usual, found that the invasion risked a catastrophe worse than the initial Chernobyl explosion and fire, which sent radioactive material into the atmosphere and became a symbol of the Soviet Union’s last years of stumbling. Billions of dollars have been spent by the international community, including Russia, to stabilize and secure the region.
Authorities are now working with Ukraine’s defense ministry on ways to protect Chernobyl’s most critical sites. At the top of the list are anti-drone and anti-tank barrier systems, along with a system to protect against fighter jets and helicopters.
None of this will matter much if Russian President Vladimir Putin turns to nuclear weapons, which Shevchuk says he can no longer rule out.
“I understand that they can use any kind of weapon and they can do any terrible thing,” he said.
Chernobyl needs special international protection with a strong UN mandate, Harms said. As with the initial disaster, the risks are not only for Ukraine, but also for nearby Belarus and beyond.
“It depends on where the wind blows,” she said.
After watching thousands of Soviet troops work to cope with the aftermath of the 1986 incident, sometimes without protection, Harms and others were shocked by the neglect of the safety or ignorance of Russian soldiers in the recent invasion.
Some soldiers even stole highly radioactive materials such as souvenirs or possibly for sale.
“I think the movies have the imagination that all the dangerous little things are very valuable,” Shevchuk said.
He believes that hundreds or thousands of soldiers have damaged their health, probably with no idea of the consequences, despite warnings from factory workers to their commanders.
“Most of the soldiers were about 20 years old,” he said. “All these actions prove that their rule in Russia as a whole, human life is zero.
The full extent of Russia’s activities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is still unknown, especially as troops have dispersed mines that the Ukrainian military is still searching for. Some have detonated, further damaging the radioactive land. The Russians also set fire to several forest fires, which were extinguished.
Ukrainian authorities are unable to monitor radiation levels in the area because Russian troops stole the system’s main server, disconnecting on March 2. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday that it had not yet received remote data from its surveillance systems. The Russians even took personal radiation monitors from Chernobyl employees.
At the communications center, one of the buildings in the area, which is not overgrown with nature, the Russians robbed and left a carpet of broken glass. The building feels deep from the 1980s, with a map on the wall that still shows the Soviet Union. Someone had taken a pink marker at some point and delineated the border of Ukraine.
Normally, about 6,000 people work in the area, about half of them at the NPP. When the Russians invaded, most workers were told to evacuate immediately. Now about 100 are left in the nuclear power plant, and 100 are elsewhere.
Semenov, a security engineer, recalled how the Russians were checking other workers for what they called radicals.
“We said, ‘Look at our documents, 90% of us are from Russia,'” he said. “But we are patriots of our country,” referring to Ukraine.
When the Russians hurriedly left on March 31st as part of a withdrawal from the region that left burnt tanks and traumatized communities, they took more than 150 members of the Ukrainian National Guard to Belarus. Shevchuk fears they are now in Russia.
In their haste, the Russians gave nuclear power plant managers a choice: sign a document saying the soldiers had defended the site and had no complaints, or be taken to Belarus. The managers signed.
One safeguard the Russians appear to have taken was to leave an open line directing communications from the nuclear power plant through the workers’ town of Slavutych and to authorities in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. It has been used several times, Shevchuk said.
“I think they realized it had to be for their safety,” he said. The IAEA announced on Tuesday that the plant could now be connected directly to Ukraine’s nuclear regulator.
Another Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye in southeastern Ukraine remains under Russian control. It is the largest in Europe.
Shevchuk, like other Ukrainians, had it with Putin.
“We are inviting him to the new safe haven,” he said. “Then we’ll close it.”
Add Comment