Ukraine claims Russian soldiers may create a new radiation threat near Chernobyl

Ukraine claims Russian soldiers may create a new radiation threat near Chernobyl.  

A top Ukrainian official accused Russia of “irresponsible” actions near the occupied Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Sunday. 

It could spread radiation across much of Europe and urged the UN to dispatch a mission to investigate the hazards.

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

She claimed that Russian forces were moving many obsolete and poorly maintained weapons, posing a threat to the containment vessel built around the station’s wrecked fourth reactor.

In addition, the Russian military was preventing firefighters from bringing vast numbers of flames into the area under control.

“The irresponsible and unprofessional activities of Russian servicemen in nuclear safety framework pose a very severe threat not just to Ukraine but to hundreds of millions of Europeans,” Vereshchuk wrote on her Telegram account.

“We demand that the United Nations Security Council take immediate steps to demilitarise the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, as well as dispatch a special mission to eliminate the risk of a repeat of the Chernobyl disaster as a result of Russian occupying forces’ actions,” she said.

Damage to the containment vessel, which was developed with European funding, would “inevitably result in the discharge in the atmosphere of a significant amount of radioactive dust and contamination in Ukraine and other European nations,” according to Vereshchuk.

She claimed that Russia was “ignorant of these dangers” by continuing to transfer weapons near the station.

On the ground, Reuters was unable to verify Vereshchuk’s assertions independently. Russian soldiers have repeatedly denied putting nuclear facilities in Ukraine in jeopardy.

The fire and explosion in Chernobyl’s fourth reactor in 1986 carried radiation as far as the United Kingdom and Spain. Thousands of deaths have been attributed to the accident and the radiation emitted due to it.

All of its reactors have since been decommissioned.

In the early days of the invasion last month, the Russian military controlled the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, preventing staff from leaving or being spelled off by other workers.

Slavutych’s mayor announced early Monday that Russian forces that took over the town over the weekend had left. Slavutych was constructed and built to accommodate the plant’s personnel after the 1986 tragedy.