Status: 01/04/2022 07:44
Five weeks after the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian army withdrew from the region around the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant. According to Ukrainian information, parts of the troops received “considerable doses of radiation”.
Some of the Russian soldiers evacuated from the site of the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant received “significant doses of radiation”, according to Ukrainian sources. State-owned energy supplier Energoatom said soldiers had dug trenches in the forest in the exclusion zone around the partially damaged nuclear power plant. In doing so, they are believed to have come into contact with radiated material below the surface. At the first sign of illness, the soldiers would have panicked and prepared to withdraw.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on Facebook that Russian soldiers received such massive doses of radiation “that the consequences had to be explained to them by doctors in special protective suits”. An independent confirmation of the Ukrainian information is not yet available. Neither the Kremlin nor the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have commented.
conflicting parties as source
In the current situation, information about the course of the war, bombing and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly verified by an independent body.
Ukrainian soldiers allegedly kidnapped
Energoatom also announced that Russian troops had taken Ukrainian soldiers who had been held hostage since the beginning of the war. “When they fled the Chernobyl nuclear facility, the Russian occupiers took members of the National Guard who had been holding hostage since February 24,” he said, citing plant workers. It is unknown how many Ukrainian soldiers are involved.
Energoatom also said Russian soldiers stole “equipment and other valuables” from the decommissioned nuclear facility. Ukrainian experts would now be sent to the site to search it for “potential explosive devices”.
Written transfer of control of the nuclear plant to Ukraine
Russian troops began withdrawing from the Chernobyl region yesterday. The IAEA, citing Ukrainian information, said Russia wrote to transfer control of the area back to the Ukrainians. Russian soldiers drove in two columns towards the Belarusian border. Staff at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were informed in the morning about the planned withdrawal. Thus, two temporary storage facilities for nuclear waste were also delivered, located in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the deactivated plant.
The partially damaged nuclear plant had been in Russian hands since Russia invaded five weeks ago. Despite the harsh conditions, Ukrainian workers at the plant oversaw the safe storage of the old fuel rods and the remains of the reactor that exploded in 1986, which sits under a concrete dome.
Ukraine – Russians kick up radioactive dust in Chernobyl
Bernd Musch-Borowska, WDR, currently Lviv, April 1, 2022 8:27 am