Ukraine claims that Russian forces near Chernobyl may pose a new radiation threat

*Paromita Das

On Sunday, a senior Ukrainian official accused Russia of “irresponsible” behaviour near the occupied Chernobyl power plant, which could send radiation across much of Europe, and urged the UN to dispatch a mission to assess the risks.

Russian forces, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, are “militarising” the exclusion zone around the station, which was the site of the world’s worst civil nuclear accident in 1986.

She claimed that Russian forces were transporting large amounts of old and poorly maintained weapons, posing a risk of damaging the containment vessel built around the station’s wrecked fourth reactor.

In addition, Russian forces were preventing firefighters from putting out a large number of fires in the area.
“In the context of nuclear safety, Russian servicemen’s irresponsible and unprofessional actions pose a very serious threat not only to Ukraine, but to hundreds of millions of Europeans,” Vereshchuk said on her Telegram account.

“As a result, we demand that the United Nations Security Council take immediate steps to demilitarise the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl power station, as well as dispatch a special mission to eliminate the risks of a repeat of the Chernobyl accident caused by Russian occupying forces,” she said.

Damage to the containment vessel, which was built with European funding, would “inevitably lead to the release in the atmosphere of a significant amount of radioactive dust and contamination not only in Ukraine but also in other European countries,” according to Vereshchuk.
Russia, she claimed, was “ignorant of these dangers” by continuing to transport weapons near the station.

On the ground, Reuters was unable to confirm Vereshchuk’s claims. Russia has previously denied that its forces posed a threat to Ukrainian nuclear facilities.

The fire and explosion in Chernobyl’s fourth reactor in 1986 sent radiation as far away as Britain and Spain. Thousands of people have died as a result of the accident’s aftermath and the radiation it released.

All of its reactors have now been decommissioned.

Russian forces occupied the Chernobyl power station in the early days of the invasion last month, preventing staff from leaving or being spelled off by other workers for a time.
The mayor of Slavutych, the town built to house the plant’s employees in the aftermath of the 1986 accident, said early Monday that Russian forces who took over the town over the weekend had now left.

In an online video post, Yuri Fomichev stated that the troops had “completed the work they had set out to do” and were now gone. Initially, he stated that three people had been killed in the clashes.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that it was closely monitoring the situation and was concerned about the station’s ability to rotate staff in and out.