The Ukrainian state agency that looks after the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that suffered a meltdown in 1986 has said that occupying Russian forces fleeing the area have stolen radioactive material and that it was likely killing them.
Ukraine's State Agency for Managing the Exclusion Zone made the statement as Ukraine retakes areas around Chernobyl that were held by the Russians for over 6 weeks. It is said that the soldiers looted laboratories and escaped with extremely hazardous items, including 133 highly radioactive substances.
Photographs from the plant, which has to be maintained by a team of hundreds of scientists and professionals to keep it safe, showed ransacked and badly damaged rooms.
The Ukrainian energy minister has also said that the occupying Russians exposed themselves to vast quantities of radiation that would likely kill them within a short period of time. German Gulashchenko said:
"They dug bare soil contaminated with radiation, collected radioactive sand in bags for fortification, breathed this dust. After a month of such exposure, they have a maximum of one year of life. More precisely, not life but a slow death from diseases. Every Russian soldier will bring a piece of Chernobyl home. Dead or alive. The ignorance of Russian soldiers is shocking."
During the occupation, 139 Ukrainian soldiers who guarded Chernobyl were forced into an underground bunker for over a month. They have now disappeared and thought to have been taken to Russia as prisoners via Belarus.
The Ukrainian interior minister explained this in an interview with CNN, saying:
"They were kept here for 30 days without sufficient lighting and food. They were not allowed outside. On the last day they were taken away from here to an unknown direction. Today we know nothing about their fate unfortunately."
Adding:
"The Russian military went through all Ukrainian clothes, personal belongings, like dogs, in search of, probably, money, valuables, laptops. There was looting here. The Russian military stole computers and equipment."
Russia has now left the northern area around Kyiv and Chernobyl and says it is concentrating its forces onto the east of the country.
[Based on reporting by: The Daily Mail]
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