They dug trenches on radiation-contaminated soil, defecated in offices, and spray-painted Illuminati symbols on the walls. But it is the kettles that confuse Toporowski. A lieutenant colonel in the National Guard of Ukraine, defending the decommissioned Chornobil nuclear power plant, wondered why the soldiers stole electric kettles but left behind the base plates needed to power them. “Why?” Toporowski wondered, dressed in army green with long sleeves, a radiation shield. A device that measured his accumulated exposure was cut on the label of his name. “Who needs kettles without electricity?”
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Toporovsky was based at Slavutych, a city north of Kiev built for survivors of the 1986 Chornobil accident when the Russian army crossed the border into Belarus on February 24. Their tanks and armored vehicles ran through the Red Forest, named after the orange-brown pines, to occupy Cornobill. As the Russians took control of the reactors and radioactive waste facilities, the radioactivity measurements went up immediately, which the International Atomic Energy Agency said was most likely the result of military vehicles stirring contaminated ground. A Russian firing range near a shelter above the sarcophagus covering the reactor that exploded at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Chornobyl, Ukraine, Saturday, April 16, 2022. (AP Photo / Efrem Lukatsky). EL Around the world, the word Chornobyl is synonymous with environmental disaster. But the troops sent by Moscow acted as if the site of the nuclear disaster was just another battlefield. To Toporovsky, this said something about the situation in Russia under President Vladimir Putin. “It’s pedagogical,” he said. The Russians should have known that they had been sent to occupy a zone that would expose them to radiation for a year in a week. “And they dug a lot of trenches there,” Toporowski said. He never sets foot in the Red Forest. “I’m not crazy,” he explained. But he had visited abandoned Russian positions to see the recklessness with his own eyes. “If you want I can guide you there,” he said. “If you are bored in your life, it is possible.” Russian trenches and firing points in the highly radioactive Red Forest near the Chornobil nuclear power plant in Ukraine on April 16, 2022. (AP Photo / Efrem Lukatsky). EL The offer was accepted, he got into the driver’s seat of a rented Nissan Qashqai and left the town of Chornobyl, heading to the hotspot known as the exclusion zone, speeding past deer crossings and radiation warning signs. He warned to keep the car windows closed because the radiation levels were 43 times above normal. He pointed to the fallen trees that he said had been hit by Russian bombing. “This is where the Red Forest begins,” he said. He stopped at an intersection t next to a Russian checkpoint. It was made of sandbags filled with contaminated soil dug from a nearby pit. The shelter was camouflaged with orange pine branches. “Welcome to the Russian position. And here, the radiation is 24 times the limit “. He said it was safe to take a brief look around. He lit a cigarette. A structure with a trunk frame and tarpaulin walls looked into a dozen trenches, some large enough for some soldiers and others made to accommodate tanks and armored vehicles. The area around the camp was charred black. Toporovsky said the Russians set it on fire to clean the brush so that enemy troops could not approach them secretly. Two computers with their motherboards torn were thrown on the side of the road, another mystery among many. Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr Toporovsky of the National Guard of Ukraine inspects an abandoned Russian post in Tsornobil, Ukraine on June 2, 2022. Stewart Bell / Global News Toporovsky said the Russians had reached two columns. Fearing that the nuclear facility would be damaged by ammunition, the National Guard was unable to put up much resistance. Many of them were captured as a result – 181 only on the first day by Count Toporovsky. The Nazis and Soviets had fought for Tsornobil in 1943, but that was before there were reactors. This time, the sensitivity of the ground and the carelessness of the Russians demanded attention. “We are not crazy people,” Toporowski said. “We can not fight here.” He went to the clearing for a closer look, stopping to pick up the things the Russians had left behind as evidence from the crime scene. Garbage was thrown everywhere. Gypsy cans, water bottles, a novel. Examine a diet box with a Soviet-looking star on the package. There were no kettles. Maybe their soldiers went back to Russia. Toporovsky said that what the Russians were doing there did not make sense. “You have to be crazy or stupid to do that. Do they wish for death? “ Ukrainian soldiers walk at Tsornobil nuclear power plant, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. AP Photo / Oleksandr Ratushniak Toporowski got back in the car and ran a stop sign. It was Chornobil, after the Russian occupation. Traffic regulations were not on anyone’s mind. In a straight line, it accelerated to 150 kilometers per hour. “It’s harder to target if you drive faster.” Russian diversion teams, sent across the border to wreak havoc, may be in the woods, he said.
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During the five weeks that the Russians occupied Chernobyl, the IAEA repeatedly warned that nuclear facilities should not be “shut down in any way,” but the power grid was disconnected and the IAEA system used remote monitoring terminated. The Russians bombed a checkpoint in Slavutych, stole radiation equipment and rubbish from buildings, leaving empty vodka bottles and an upside-down swastika on an office door. “It was like the last century when the Tartars or the Mongols entered Russia in Kiev,” Toporovsky said. The corridor of a Tsornobil building used by Russian forces. Stewart Bell / World News A spray-painted message outside another building used as a Russian barracks called the Ukrainians assholes, scum and Nazis. Inside, papers and reading material were scattered around the rooms, along with piles of smelly rubbish. A Russian newspaper, an anthology of Russian anecdotes and the poetry of Alexander Pushkin, who wrote about a man who “read and read, but none of this made sense.” At the Chornobyl church, Lubov Zavadenko said she had spied on the Russians after they arrived and used her phone to broadcast what she saw. When she was caught, she thought she was done. “I was forced to kneel with a gun to my head, I thought I was going to die,” he said. They let her go with a warning but they wanted her pig. She refused, saying it was to feed the villagers. “They drank a lot of vodka,” he noted. But he felt sorry for the soldiers, whom he said were too young and untrained to understand the danger zone they had been ordered to capture. “I think they did not know about this red wood, they just received orders.” Lubov Zavadenko, a resident of Chornobyl, said Russian troops had left the city with looted washing machines and women’s clothes stacked in their tanks. Stewart Bell / World News The Russians left the city on March 31, on the same road they had come in, with their vehicles full of loot. They took sheets, women’s clothes, shoes, washing machines, bicycles, cars and even a school bus, Zavadenko said. According to Ukrainian authorities, they also stole millions of nuclear equipment. “They stole everything,” Zavadenko said. They even got kettles, minus the bases they needed to connect them, he said. Her theory: The soldiers were so eerie that they thought they could use electric kettles to boil water in open hearths and camp stoves. Toporowski said Russian contempt for Tsornobil’s dangers had returned to haunt them. “We have information that about 100 people are staying in hospitals in Belarus, all those who have stayed in these trenches in this red wood,” he said. He insisted it was not just rumors. “I’m sure!” Asked if he had concluded why the Russians were so irresponsible, he even hesitated to answer, as if it were obvious. “I told you about the kettles,” he said. [email protected]
