A Chernobyl official said the act was “suicidal” for soldiers who had taken the site of the nuclear disaster because the radioactive dust they inhaled was likely to cause internal radiation to their bodies. Chernobyl levels of radioactivity had risen due to heavy military vehicles pounding the ground, Ukraine’s state nuclear inspectorate said on February 25. So far, however, no details have been released about what exactly happened. The two Ukrainian workers were on duty when Russian tanks entered Chernobyl on February 24 and took control of the site, where personnel are still responsible for safely storing spent fuel and overseeing the wreckage of the 1986 reactor. Both said they saw Russian tanks and other armored vehicles moving through the Red Forest, which is the most radioactively contaminated part of the area around the power station, about 100 kilometers north of Kiev. The regular soldiers a worker had talked to while working with them at the facility had not heard of the blast, he said. The Russian military said radioactivity was normal after the plant was occupied and that its actions prevented possible “nuclear provocations” by Ukrainian nationalists. Russia has previously denied that its forces endangered nuclear facilities inside Ukraine. Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to Chernobyl staff bills. The red forest, so named because tens of square kilometers of pine trees turned red after the blast absorbed the radiation, is considered so polluted that even the workers at the nuclear plant are not allowed to go there. “No one goes there… for God’s sake. “There is no one there,” said Valery Seida, deputy general manager of the Chernobyl plant, who was not there at the time of the Russian invasion. But the Russian military convoy passed through the zone, the two officials said. One of them said he was using an abandoned road. “A large convoy of military vehicles led to a road just behind our facilities and this road passes by the red forest,” said one of the sources. “The escort picked up a large column of dust. “Many radiation protection sensors have been exceeded,” he said. After the Russian troops arrived, the two factory workers worked for almost a month with their colleagues until they were allowed to go home last week, when Russian commanders allowed shipment replacement staff. Reuters could not independently verify their accounts, which were given over the phone on Friday and on condition of anonymity, because they feared for their safety. The next day, Russian forces captured the town of Slavutych near Chernobyl, where most of the factory workers live. Seida and the mayor of Slavutych said on Monday that Russian forces had now left the city. Reuters could not independently determine the levels of radioactivity for people in the immediate vicinity of the Russian convoy that entered the Red Forest. On Sunday, the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine warned of the danger of radioactivity in Chernobyl, as he criticized the Russian forces for “militarization” of the exclusion zone. Iryna Vereshchuk called on the UN Security Council to take immediate action to demilitarize the area and send a special mission to eliminate the risk of an accident at the site of the worst political disaster in the world. Burnt trees appear in the Chernobyl zone near the Ukraine-Belarus border crossing on February 13, days before the Russian invasion (Getty Images) The Ukrainian State Agency for the Management of Exclusion Zone said on February 27 that the last file it had on a sensor near a nuclear waste storage facility – before it lost control of the monitoring system – showed that the absorbed radiation dose was seven times higher than normal . The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on February 25 that radioactivity levels at the Chernobyl site had reached 9.46 microsieverts per hour but remained “within the operating range” recorded in the exclusion zone since its inception and were not threat to the general population. Safe levels, according to IAEA standards listed on the agency’s website, are up to 1 millisievert per year for the general population and 20 millisievert per year for radiation professionals, where 1 millisievert equals 1,000 microsievert. The IAEA announced that it had stopped receiving surveillance data from the Chernobyl site on March 9. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is still considered dangerous by the Ukrainian authorities. Entering the scene of an accident without permission is a crime under Ukrainian law. Additional Reuters report
