Status: 04/01/2022 07:44 a.m
Five weeks after the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian army has withdrawn from the region around the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant.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Some of the Russian soldiers withdrawn from the site of the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant received “significant doses of radiation”, according to Ukrainian sources. The state energy supplier Energoatom reported that the 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 irradiated material beneath the surface. At the first sign of illness, the soldiers would have panicked and prepared to withdraw.
Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on Facebook that the Russian soldiers had received such large 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) commented.
conflicting parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body.
Allegedly kidnapped Ukrainian soldiers
Energoatum also said Russian troops had taken away Ukrainian soldiers they had held hostage since the beginning of the war. “When they ran away from the Chernobyl nuclear facility, the Russian occupiers took away members of the National Guard they had held hostage since February 24,” it said, citing workers at the plant. It is not known how many Ukrainian soldiers are involved.
Energoatom also said Russian soldiers stole “equipment and other valuables” from the decommissioned nuclear facility. Ukrainian specialists would now be sent to the site to comb it for “potential explosive devices”.
Written transfer of control of nuclear power plant to Ukraine
Russian troops began withdrawing from the Chernobyl region yesterday. The IAEA, citing Ukrainian information, said Russia had written to transfer control of the area back to the Ukrainians. Russian soldiers drove in two columns in the direction of the Belarusian border. The staff of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was informed in the morning about the planned withdrawal. Accordingly, two interim storage facilities for nuclear waste, which are located in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the decommissioned power plant, were also handed over.
The partially damaged nuclear power plant had been in Russian hands since Russia invaded five weeks ago. Despite the adverse conditions, the Ukrainian workers at the plant supervised the safe storage of the old fuel rods and the remains of the reactor that exploded in 1986, which lies under a concrete dome.