The Russian army occupying Chernobyl may have planted a maze of mines as they retreated, a Ukrainian official fears. Undaunted by security concerns, the occupiers held more than 100 Ukrainian workers in the factory for a month, limiting them to one main meal the day before they left in early April. Graffiti placards reading “this quote is mined” and “wait for a surprise, look for a mine” were left behind, according to footage compiled by the Ukrainian Witness media group. This means that there is still an increased risk for workers due to radiation and the possibility of explosions caused by planted mines. Maksym Shevchuk, deputy head of the Ukrainian State Service for the Management of the Exclusion Zone, told i: “Our swordsmen are now working to demine key sites and control everything that can be controlled.” He said that “at present people only use known routes and paved roads” to avoid any hidden mines. Last week, Belarusian media outlets Belsat TV reported that Belarusian border guards had been blown up by a landmine left by the Russian military as they left the factory. Valeriy Korshunov, founder of the European Chernobyl Institute based in Ukraine, also warned that the nuclear fuel storage facility and other facilities within the exclusion zone “could be mined”. A dosimeter measures the level of radiation around the trenches dug by the Russian army in the Red Forest (Image: Reuters) Map showing where Russian forces dug trenches in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (Image: Metro.co.uk) Shocking images from inside the exclusion zone now show a scene of destruction, with bombed bridges, abandoned tanks and looted facilities. Footage also appeared on the Telegram that seems to confirm fears that the Russians have dug trenches in the Red Forest, which is the most polluted place in the region. The soldiers had apparently been camping for weeks in the woods – which received some of the highest doses of radiation since the reactor exploded in 1986 – and are still highly radioactive 36 years later. “The international community has taken steps to make Chernobyl completely safe,” Claire Corkhill, a professor of nuclear degradation at the University of Sheffield, told the newspaper. He added that the Russian invaders now “confused the whole plan we had for Chernobyl”. An overview of the trenches near the Pripyat plant (Image: Reuters) Experts say there are no reports of increased levels of radioactivity in Europe at this time (Image: Reuters) According to Energoatom, which operates all four nuclear power plants in Ukraine, all the buildings at Chernobyl were looted and a modern 5 5 million laboratory was looted and destroyed. More worrying, experts say, is the loss of communication and monitoring capabilities. Prior to the war, data from Chernobyl were sent daily to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Patrick Reagan, a professor of radionuclide metrology at the University of Surrey, said: “The biggest concern for them is that they did not receive the reports sent to the IAEA.
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They monitor the background levels all the time, so if you do not have this information, you can not send this information independently and you can not see what the radiation levels are on the ground there. “If there was a big release [of radiation]you can not hide it, you can measure it in Europe. “There is a very clear fingerprint, a gamma ray signature that tells you that there is a release of radioactive material associated with a fission nuclear fuel event. “And there are no reports of any of them at the moment.” Contact our news team by emailing us at [email protected] For more stories like this, check out our news page.
