Ukraine war: Russian forces leave Chernobyl after radiation exposure
- The troops ‘panicked at the first sign of illness’, says Ukraine state nuclear company Energoatom, after they dug trenches at the highly contaminated site
- All the occupiers have left, the operator said, and the Russian side has agreed to hand back to Ukraine the responsibility for protecting Chernobyl.
Russian troops have left the Chernobyl nuclear plant after soldiers got “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches at the highly contaminated site, Ukraine’s state power company said Thursday as heavy fighting raged on the outskirts of Kyiv and other fronts.
Energoatom, the operator, gave no immediate details on the condition of the troops or how many were affected. But it said the Russians had dug in in the forest inside the exclusion zone around the now-closed plant, the site in 1986 of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
The troops “panicked at the first sign of illness,” which “showed up very quickly”, and began to prepare to leave, Energoatom said.
The company said all of the Russian forces occupying the Chernobyl nuclear power station had withdrawn from the territory of the defunct plant. There was no immediate comment from the Russian authorities.
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Russian military claims Chernobyl nuclear plant under joint protection with Ukrainian forces
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said it is preparing to send a mission to the radioactive waste facilities at Chernobyl.
Though Russian troops seized control of Chernobyl soon after the invasion began on February 24, the plant’s Ukrainian staff continued to oversee the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel and supervise the concrete-encased remains of the reactor that exploded in 1986, causing the world’s worst nuclear accident.