Russian military forces have seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukrainian officials say. Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak said the “totally pointless attack” on Thursday amounted to “one of the most serious threats in Europe today”.
An explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 led to the worst nuclear disaster in human history, both in cost and casualty. Located around 16 km away from the city of Chernobyl and a little over 100 km away from Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, the power plant witnessed the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Ukraine’s president warned such a disaster could happen again if Russia continued its invasion.
After a brief but fierce battle, Russian troops were able to capture the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine, the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in human history. On the first day of Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine, its military forces overran the plant and held several staff members of the Chernobyl facilities hostage, Ukrainian authorities said.
“Our defenders are giving their lives so that the tragedy of 1986 will not be repeated,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote earlier on Twitter. “This is a declaration of war against the whole of Europe.”
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also warned of the possibility of “another ecological disaster” at the site. Ukrainian officials reported radiation levels had been “exceeded” in a number of places in the area, but Russia said that was not the case.
Chernobyl’s “exclusion zone” – a 32-km (19-mile) radius around the plant – remains largely devoid of human life, 36 years after a flawed reactor design and series of errors by its operators caused a major explosion at the plant.
The plant’s three other reactors were all shut down by 2000 and it has since been decommissioned. Radiation levels in the area have remained higher than normal from the 1986 leak, chronicled in an eponymous HBO mini-series in 2019 that helped make the site a tourist attraction. Russian troops reportedly entered the exclusion zone earlier on Thursday before crossing over into Ukraine. The White House says it has received reports that staff is being held hostage at the site by Russian soldiers.
