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KIEV, KOMPAS.com – Ukraine worry disaster site nuclear Chernobyl can be used as a shortcut to attack the capital of Kiev by the invaders Russia.
Already one of the most dangerous places on earth, the radiation exclusion zone in border Belarus can now become a battlefield.
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Nearly 8,000 Guards Border Additional Ukrainians have been sent to the regions, some of which are still high radioactive, even though 36 years have passed after nuclear disaster worst in the world.
Ukraine braced for a Russian invasion, possibly from Belarus, using Chernobyl to break through the defenses allowing the tanks to race south to Kiev.
The nearly empty 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone reaches the border in the north, where up to 80,000 Russian and Belarusian troops, including the Spetsnaz special forces, are ready for military exercises.
Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Shakraichuk, of the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service told reporters recently that the danger in the Chernobyl area is increasing.
“We are increasing the protection force, increasing the number of patrols and increasing the number of people in these patrols.”
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The current state of the Chernobyl area
Daily Mail got special permission to visit the zone, a haunted and secluded area of abandoned factories, schools and homes. Planted concrete blocks rise from the bushes in a snow-covered pine forest.
Visitors entering the area are given a small Geiger counter by security personnel which occasionally beeps “ping”, indicating a safe radiation reading below the threshold.
Only 145 civilians have settled here permanently, most of them over the age of 70. Like the military, most of them are out of sight, in the no-go zone around the site of the 1986 nuclear power plant meltdown.
A local resident familiar with the zone said: “More troops have arrived and we see them patrolling and moving closer to the border.
“The zone crosses the border with Belarus where the Russians are encamped and our troops are clearly prepared to meet them if they come here.”
The obvious advantage was that there were no civilians joining the resistance or getting in the way in the area.
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Radiation levels are now tolerable as long as the exposure doesn’t last too long, but if the Russians cross the area they could be in Kiev in two hours.
“But if they come, we will fight them. Everyone will fight back, no matter which direction they take,” the resident told the Daily Mail.
Attack shortcut
It is believed additional Ukrainian forces in the area are securing and searching abandoned buildings, monitoring the Russian Spetsnaz for sneaking across the border to initiate an invasion.
Russian troops could use abandoned buildings for cover, while Ukrainian commanders might be nervous about launching air and artillery strikes against attackers, worried about spreading radiation further.
Radiation buried in the ground and in buildings may be propelled into the air by explosives under bombardment.
Ukrainian National Guard troops who were transferred to the area were carrying out military exercises in Chernobyl on Tuesday (1/2/2022), just a few miles from the border.
There is a newly repaired highway that runs from Chernobyl to Kiev, meaning Russian tanks could potentially overrun a range of 140 miles in a few hours.
One source said: “This is an obvious way for the Russians if they are aiming for a rapid armored attack on the capital.”
Deep in the heart of the exclusion zone lies Reactor No. 4, which is now covered in thousands of tonnes of concrete and covered with a metal ‘containment’ cover in 2016.
This concrete giant looms large in the shadows of an almost desolate forest, a reminder of the April 1986 explosion and fire that unleashed a plume of radiation across Eastern and Western Europe, as far as England.
Official figures claim the death toll at 31, although long-term estimates vary between 4,000 and 60,000.
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