A senior Ukrainian official on Thursday evening said Russian Federation (RF) troops stationed at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station thoroughly looted support facilities before evacuating the place.
Evhen Kramarenko, head of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) said RF troops stripped a dormitory-style hotel with cafeteria normally used by engineers at the site, carrying away glasses and plates, forks and knives, tea pots and pans, and serving trays. He made the comments at a TV24 television news marathon, on Thursday evening.
The RF commander forced the senior CEZ engineer at gunpoint to sign a statement that all damages caused to the facility, were not caused by RF troops, he said.
Kramarenko’s accusations followed Mar. 23 reports that RF troops, who occupied the station premises on 24 Feb., looted a state-of-the-art radiation analysis laboratory at the CEZ, carrying away more than six million Eur worth of equipment.
RF forces according to Kyiv statements used the site to store dozens of tons of ammunition, because the UAF could not attack the ammo depot for fear of radiation release. It was not clear from Kramarenko’s comments whether the RF troops took the ammunition with them, or left it on site.
A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station went critical and triggered a steam explosion in 1986, in the world’s worst atomic energy accident. Smoke and dust from a fire at the reactor spread as far as Sweden. An international consortium built a radiation containment shelter over the reactor remains in 2006.
Ukrainian media since the RF’s takeover of the facility repeatedly profiled RF troops not taking steps to protect themselves from lingering radiation in the vicinity. RF troops driving their armored vehicles in huge dust clouds through the CEZ’s notorious “red forest”, a stand of pines known to be heavily contaminated with lingering isotopes, was widely reported.
According to both Ukrainian and independent Belarusian media, a radiation treatment in Gomel, Belarus has been overwhelmed with RF soldiers needing testing or treatment for radiation exposure. In some cases, radiation doses received by RF troops were sufficient to ruin a soldier’s health in a year, and kill him in two, the reports said.
