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Russian troops occupying the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant have left, plant staff announced Thursday.
According to Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom, plant staff said there are currently no “outsiders” at the site.
Earlier, he said some Russian forces had departed for the border with Belarus, leaving a small group behind.
The announcement appears to confirm reports of a pullout released Wednesday by senior US defense officials.
Russian troops seized Chernobyl at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine.
“This morning, the invaders announced their intentions to abandon the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,” Energoatom said in a statement.
The company also confirmed reports that Russian troops had dug trenches in the most contaminated part of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, receiving “significant doses” of radiation. There are unconfirmed reports that some are being treated in Belarus.
The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, expects to send a commission to the plant in the coming days.
The Archyde.com news agency quoted plant workers as saying some of the soldiers had no idea they were in a radiation zone.
The Russian military, however, said that following capturing the plant, radiation levels at the plant had remained within a normal range.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement that it might not confirm the reports.
However, its director, Rafael Grossi, said he was in close consultation with the Ukrainian authorities to send a mission to the Chernobyl plant in the coming days.
Chernobyl plant staff report a withdrawal of Russian troops from the area
While “Chernobyl” is a word that evokes apocalypse, nuclear experts stressed throughout this saga that there was no risk of “another Chernobyl.”
There is no working nuclear reactor at the site and as Professor Claire Corkhill of the University of Sheffield told me at the time of the takeover by Russian troops, even if the buildings containing contaminated material were drilled, “we would not be talking regarding plumes of radioactive smoke”.
She was much more concerned when Russian forces attacked a building at the functioning Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility on March 4. That incident prompted the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to plan a trip to Ukraine, essentially to ask Russian forces to keep nuclear facilities out of the line of fire.
“What’s worrying regarding Chernobyl now,” Professor Corkhill told me, “is that we haven’t had regular communication between the site and the IAEA, which basically keeps a [registro de seguridad] where any potentially hazardous material is found. Now we have to go in and establish that none of that material is missing.”
Other scientists are concerned regarding the damage that may have been done to a place that has become a wildlife refuge and international research collaboration site.
Professor Nick Beresford, who studies the landscape of the exclusion zone, says his Ukrainian colleagues now don’t know if they will have any labs they can return to. “The area itself, over the last almost 40 years, has become a wildlife site,” he added.
“A lot of rare species moved out when people moved out. We just don’t know how this will have affected wildlife.”
There is concern regarding the wildlife that had settled in the area near the reactor
The new Russian strategy
In recent days, Russia has said it will reduce its operations around the capital, kyiv, in northern Ukraine, and focus its forces on the eastern Donbas region. Chernobyl is located north of kyiv.
But on Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Moscow was repositioning rather than withdrawing in order to regroup, resupply and bolster its offensive in Donbas.
“At the same time, Russia is keeping pressure on kyiv and other cities. Therefore, we can expect additional offensive actions, which will bring even more suffering,” he said.
There was no change in Russia’s goal of seeking a military result, he added.
The occupation of the Chernobyl site since February 24, the day of the invasion, has been plagued by concerns regarding power outages and problems for staff, many of whom were trapped there for weeks and unable to return home.
Although no longer a working power plant, Chernobyl was never fully abandoned and still requires constant management.
It is the site of what in 1986 was the world’s worst nuclear accident.
The Russian pullout follows an announcement several days ago by the mayor of Slavutych, a nearby town that is home to plant workers, that Russian troops had left the town.
