Russian troops laid landmines at the Chernobyl power plant as they retreated, a Ukrainian official has said.
Maksym Shevchuk, deputy head of Ukraine’s State Agency for Exclusion Zone Management (DAZN), told The i: “Our sappers are now working on the de-mining of key locations and checking everything it is possible to check.”
He added that “for now people are using only well-known routes and asphalt roads” so as to avoid any hidden explosives planted across the site.
Russians scrawled warnings across the exclusion zone, warning: “This passage is mined” and “expect a surprise, look for a mine”, according to footage released by Ukrainian Witness media group.
Occupying soldiers allegedly stole radioactive substances from research laboratories at the site that could potentially kill them, Ukraine’s State Agency for Managing the Exclusion Zone claimed on Sunday.
Chernobyl’s operator Energoatom had claimed the Russian troops “panicked at the first sign of illness,” which “showed up very quickly” after they received “significant doses of radiation”.
These claims are unverified with experts suggesting they would need far higher doses than those recorded at the site to experience acute radiation sickness.
During the five-week occupation, Chernobyl nuclear plant staff reported being held captive by Russian troops amid claims they were interrogated.
The employees also said they had been trying hard to find fuel to prevent a radiation leak and had to steal fuel from the Russians to keep the reactors safe, the BBC’s Russian service reported on April 9.
Since seizing the former power plant on the first day of the invasion Russian troops had built fortifications including trenches in the so-called Red Forest, the most radioactively contaminated part of the exclusion zone.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that with renewed access to Chernobyl, Ukraine would work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to establish what Russian troops did while in control of the site.
“Russia behaved irresponsibly in Chernobyl on all accounts, from not allowing personnel of the station to perform their functions to digging trenches in the contaminated areas,” Kuleba said on Friday.
He said the Russian government must “answer to the mothers, the sister, the wives of those soldiers - why did they force them to put their lives at risk.”
The plant’s Ukrainian staff continued to oversee the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel at Chernobyl while it was occupied by Russian forces, and also supervised the concrete-encased remains of the reactor that exploded in 1986.
The exclusion zone was established because of high radiation levels in the area after a nuclear reactor exploded at the plant in April 1986 killing at least 31 people.
