The head of the State Agency for the Management of the Exclusion Zone (GAZO), Yevgeny Kramarenko, said that the Russian invaders withdrew about 10 thousand pieces of heavy equipment through Chernobyl, so both people and equipment are contaminated with radiation.
It is reported by Interfax-Ukraine.
“According to the estimates of Chernobyl workers, in the 5 days preceding the final withdrawal of Russian troops from the exclusion zone, about 10 thousand pieces of equipment passed through Chernobyl, these are tanks, wheeled vehicles, tankers, engineering equipment, including from near Kyiv. Of course, they could have been infected even when they were moving towards Ukraine, and now, when they were going to Belarus. And they keep the radionuclides,” Kramarenko explained.
According to Kramarenko, the invaders did not carry out radiation monitoring of equipment. The Russian military did not use the dosimetric stations installed in the exclusion zone. The equipment moved not only along the roads, but also along the ground, raising radioactive dust.
The head of the GAZO drew attention to the fact that in the first days of the war, 500-600 units of heavy equipment of the invaders entered Chernobyl daily. At the station itself, the invaders equipped the main headquarters, during the occupation there were about 50 pieces of equipment and 1000 soldiers. And in Chernobyl, a commandant's office was placed, to which up to 500 people were attached.
“How many of them were in the forests in these trenches, we do not know. But they dug in not only in the Red Forest, but also along the entire perimeter of the zone, also near the rivers. Trenches were dug for tanks, for guns, for snipers. It seems that they were going to stay there for a long time,” the head of the GAZO described the situation, adding that the exact area of the trenches is still unknown.
Kramarenko noted that since 1986, the main layer of radionuclides, then deposited on the soil, has already descended 30-40 cm underground, so any excavation is prohibited.
“The soldiers themselves were additionally irradiated and took away particles of this soil with them, so they can irradiate others,” Kramarenko warned.
“There are many trenches, in different places. So far, we understand that the most dangerous place is the Red Forest. For 24 hours of staying there, if you do not move, a person will receive an annual dose of radiation. If it increases its activity and breaks the top layer of the soil, then it increases by a factor of two. I don’t know about the condition of those soldiers now, they left for Belarus. This is a question for those doctors,” Kramarenko said.
Regarding the samples of dosimeters that Russian soldiers had, Kramarenko said that they were models of 50-60 years old, and “they don’t even work according to the statute of limitations.”
“They used purely psychological reassurance. This is one hundred percent stupid, no one prepared them for staying in the zone, ”summed up the head of the GAZO.
Recall that on the morning of February 24, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin announced the start of a military operation in Ukraine. On the same day, fierce clashes began in Chernobyl. The Russian military seized the territory of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Personnel were blocked on the territory of the station.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine emphasized that the Russian invaders used the Chernobyl zone for the transportation and accumulation of ammunition, the placement of command posts deliberately, since the armed forces of Ukraine could not conduct military operations on the territory of the exclusion zone.
As Fleet 2017 reported, in March, military personnel who spent several weeks in the Chernobyl exclusion zone began to enter Moscow hospitals. All this time they were raising radiation dust with their equipment, digging in radiation forests.
And at the end of March, the Belarusian Center for Radiation Medicine in Gomel received a new batch of Russian servicemen exposed to radiation. They spent a long time on the territory of the captured Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
In early April, the military medical service of the Russian Federation recorded the first death of a Russian soldier from radiation sickness. A high dose of radiation was received in the Chernobyl zone.