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Yahoo
25-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Inside the Russian Occupation of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (opinion)
Chernobyl Roulette: War in the Nuclear Disaster Zone, by Serhii Plokhy, W.W. Norton & Company, 240 pages, $29.99 The Chernobyl exclusion zone is the closest we have to a real-life postapocalyptic wasteland. After the infamous 1986 meltdown of a Soviet nuclear reactor, around 1,000 square miles in northern Ukraine were evacuated due to radioactive contamination. Video games such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Call of Duty imagine the zone as a lawless wasteland, with bandits and spies fighting in Soviet-era ghost towns while dodging radiation patches. In reality, Chernobyl is less abandoned than outsiders might imagine. The ill-fated nuclear reactor and the containment shell around it require ongoing maintenance. The area as a whole is monitored constantly for levels of contamination. A legion of Ukrainian workers regularly commutes into the exclusion zone from the nearby city of Slavutych, built after the meltdown for evacuated Chernobyl staff. And in February 2022, there were soldiers. Chernobyl, sandwiched between Kyiv and the Belarusian border, was directly in the path of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. For a little more than a month, Russian troops occupied the exclusion zone, where they found themselves prisoners of their own occupation. Although the Russians had all the firepower, they had to rely on the Ukrainian staff to protect them from radiological danger, which gave the Ukrainians leverage in the bizarre power struggle that went on there. Chernobyl Roulette, by the Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy, is a good first draft of this history. Along with the wild chronology of events, Plokhy provides brief yet vivid sketches of the people involved, from the Russian commanders and Ukrainian caretakers to the infantrymen, janitors, tour guides, and squatters in the exclusion zone. Plokhy can be heavy-handed in pressing his belief that the international community abandoned Ukraine, but he is more fair-minded about the dilemmas between collaboration and resistance that Ukrainians faced. Much of the story is told through the eyes of Valentyn Heiko, the Ukrainian foreman on duty when the invasion began. Heiko neither welcomed his new Russian overlords nor resisted them. Instead he treated the foreign soldiers as unexpected visitors to his plant. Heiko explained to Col. Andrei Frolenkov and Gen. Sergei Burakov that their troops would have to wear guest badges and follow safety instructions, just like any other delegation of outsiders. The officers had no choice but to comply, since they needed Heiko's expertise to stay safe. The staff often played on the soldiers' fear and ignorance regarding radiation. In one instance, they loudly joked in front of a group of soldiers that everyone in the plant was "screwed" because they had run out of their nonexistent "anti-radiation pills." Another time, when plant worker Serhii Dediukhin overheard a soldier fantasizing about shooting the staff, he asked out loud if the soldiers would prefer to go home in lead coffins. Even their dead bodies, the threat implied, would be a radioactive hazard. This isn't to say that the Russian army was powerless or that the Ukrainian staff had total control. Several times in March 2022, the power lines from Kyiv to Chernobyl were cut, which shut down the cooling system on the plant's nuclear waste containment unit and threatened to cause a new meltdown. Russia offered to supply Chernobyl with electricity from Belarus, a close Russian ally, which would bring the plant under tighter Russian control. Heiko agreed, on the condition that Belarus supplied electricity to Slavutych as well. For the first 26 days of the war, the siege of Slavutych also prevented the next shift of workers from coming to Chernobyl, forcing a single night-shift crew to work for nearly a month straight. When those workers started to break down mentally, management asked the Russian army to facilitate a shift change. Russian commanders were happy to oblige—both because they feared what would happen if the staff became unhinged and because it was an opportunity to flex their own muscles. Ukrainian workers then had to travel between Slavutych and Chernobyl through Belarus under armed Russian guard. The army didn't strictly have to follow the experts' warnings. They could, and did, push their luck, to the horror of the Ukrainian staff. Russian officers had their troops dig trenches in the highly irradiated Red Forest, named for the mutated, strangely colored trees growing there. Senior engineer Valerii Semenov remembered following the troops around, "warning that you may run into something that will leave you an invalid," to no avail. The soldiers even set up an open-air field kitchen in the Red Forest, cooking and eating in the cloud of contaminated dust they had kicked up. At the time, Ukrainian propaganda claimed that hundreds of Russian troops were rushed to the hospital with radiation poisoning and that one died. (Independent experts say the level of radioactivity was not high enough to do that kind of short-term damage.) Plokhy does not address those rumors, but he reports that Heiko chewed out Russian Gen. Oleg Yakushin for exposing his men to permanent health risks. "You will probably reproach yourself to the end of your life," Heiko told Yakushin. "Or not. I don't know." Semenov, the engineer, divided the Russian army into two categories: two-thirds reasonable professionals who were there to do a job, one-third "obsessed" nationalists who really believed they were liberating Ukrainians from fascism. In a bizarre echo of American propaganda leading up to the Iraq War, Russian propaganda claimed Ukraine had been developing weapons of mass destruction from leftover nuclear materials in Chernobyl. Russian forces began rummaging around for evidence of this Ukrainian weapons program, and Semenov recalled having to stop them from running an excavator through a mound of radioactive waste. Some of the troops also took the opportunity to fill their own pockets. "Those who had come with an exalted mission to free us," Semenov said, "they freed us only of things," including office supplies and tablet computers. The soldiers and workers were not alone in the exclusion zone. A few hundred squatters live in the less irradiated areas; most of them are older residents who refused to abandon their hometown. Before the war, there was also a subculture of youth who snuck in to explore the exclusion zone. They were called "stalkers," a term borrowed from Roadside Picnic, a 1972 Russian novel about scavengers in a wasteland left by alien visitors. (Andrei Tarkovsky adapted the book as the film Stalker in 1979, and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game series reimagined Roadside Picnic in real-life Chernobyl.) More recently, the Ukrainian government started developing legal, guided tourism to capitalize on the popularity of the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl. In real life, as the invasion began, a group of four stalkers showed up at the gates of the Chernobyl plant, unsure what else to do. The Ukrainian security guards, who thought the young men with camera equipment and survival gear could be Russian spies, locked them in a basement. When the Russian army took the plant, the stalkers became the prisoners of the prisoners. They eventually proved their goodwill by running the plant cafeteria and keeping everyone well fed. The Russian forces, for their part, were shocked to find anybody living in the exclusion zone. From Moscow's perspective, it was supposed to be empty territory. "Where did you all come from?" hotel owner Oleksandr Skyrda remembered the soldiers asking before forcing him to the ground at gunpoint. Unlike the plant staff, the squatters had little power over the soldiers' safety, freeing the Russian army to act with brutality. "They broke into everything," the elderly squatter Liudmyla Besedina told reporters. "They robbed. They carried everything out." But it was unarmed resistance that drove the Russian army out of Slavutych. After Russian soldiers overwhelmed the paltry Ukrainian militia defending the city, thousands of people—including a priest waving a giant wooden crucifix—poured into the streets. Taken aback by the reaction, and probably afraid of what would happen if nuclear plant workers or their family members were killed, the Russian commander agreed to pull back from the city. Hard power arrived on the heels of the nonviolent revolt. As the Ukrainian army advanced north from Kyiv, the Russian forces at Chernobyl began to pack their bags. Around noon on March 31, 2022, Yakushin's men ordered the power plant management to sign a document praising the "reliable protection" of Chernobyl and stating that there were no complaints with Russian conduct. During the next few hours, the troops grabbed as much as they could before driving off. Shift leader Volodymyr Falshovnyk saw them struggling to fit a stolen room heater into a car. It would be inaccurate to say guns did not matter during the struggle for Chernobyl. After all, it was part of a war, and the Russian army came and went with Russia's broader battlefield fortunes. But guns were not the only type of power that mattered. For a few tense weeks, the Geiger counter was as mighty as the sword. The post Inside the Russian Occupation of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone appeared first on
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Plokhy argues in Chornobyl occupation book that Russia's nuclear blackmail is ‘warning for the future'
The specter of nuclear war cast a long shadow over the 20th century, serving as a reminder of humanity's capacity for self-destruction. Now, as the world seems to shrug off Russia's nuclear saber-rattling against Ukraine — and by extension, all of humanity — a haunting question calls for an answer: Have we grown dangerously numb to the threat of a looming apocalypse? Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy's book 'Chernobyl Roulette' chronicles the 35-day occupation of the Chornobyl nuclear plant at the start of the full-scale war, highlighting the harrowing day-to-day experiences that the nearly 300 Ukrainians — firefighters, operators, and members of the National Guard — who were stationed there had to endure. (Plokhy, somewhat perplexingly, distinguishes between the Ukrainian "Chornobyl" and the Russian "Chernobyl,' in the book, using Ukrainian spelling to refer to the territory under independent Ukraine, while the latter refers to the nuclear plant and the site of the infamous disaster during Soviet times). Among the recollections from plant workers are instances such as having to persuade the occupying Russian soldiers not to disturb the 1986 disaster site in their misguided quest for 'proof' of hidden nuclear weapons. They believed that there were hidden 'American laboratories allegedly working on the production of Ukrainian nuclear weapons,' as Plokhy writes. After an initial search turned up nothing, the Russian soldiers reportedly considered digging into the mounds erected over the debris from the 1986 nuclear disaster. The plant workers convinced them otherwise, warning that doing so would only put the Russian soldiers at risk of nuclear contamination. As Plokhy puts it, the Russian soldiers realized upon listening to them they 'would be digging their own radioactive grave.' Despite such tense standoffs during the occupation, the bravery and quick thinking of Chornobyl's workers helped prevent another nuclear disaster. Yet, nearly three years later, Russia continues its nuclear blackmail. The gap between those who rely on logic and those driven by blind propaganda has only widened, leaving little room for persuasion or reason. On Feb. 14, Russia launched a long-range Shahed drone at the nuclear plant, breaking through the 'sarcophagus,' the protective structure covering the remnants of reactor number four, which exploded in the 1986 disaster. In the most extensively documented war in modern history, where each passing week unveils a new, seemingly unimaginable tragedy that risks overshadowing the last, a book that chronicles a decisive moment of the war is not only valuable but essential. The erasure of history, after all, is a key force driving Russian soldiers to take up arms and invade a neighboring country, fueling Russian leader Vladimir Putin's delusional claims that Russia's mission is to "denazify" Ukraine. That ignorance was laid bare during the occupation of Chornobyl when Russian soldiers, upon seizing the nuclear plant, demanded that leadership surrender "Banderites" and members of the Right Sector, a coalition of ultra-nationalist groups that have come to be seen as a sort of Ukrainian boogeyman in Russian propaganda. Plokhy describes in the book how Valentyn Heiko, a night shift foreman at the station, inquired about their criteria for identifying such individuals and was met with silence; he boldly suggested they start with him. Plokhy also writes how Heiko was among those who dealt with Russian forces directly during the occupation, striving to negotiate conditions that would allow the Ukrainian staff at the plant to continue their work undisturbed. Defiant yet pragmatic, Heiko told the Russian soldiers at the start of the occupation, 'Even though I detest you, I swore before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to uphold nuclear security,' and emphasized that Chornobyl was not just any nuclear facility, but a post-accident plant with unique, critical concerns. The Russian capture of Chornobyl had been swift and without violence. As Plokhy highlights throughout the book, the plant's workers were constantly 'trying to balance loyalty to their families, their homeland, and innocent civilians in Ukraine and beyond who would suffer the consequences of a nuclear accident should it occur.' Russian soldiers' threats to attack the Chornobyl plant — despite the 1986 disaster being a shared history between Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus — left many Ukrainians who came of age during that period in disbelief. 'We liquidated the (consequences of the) accident together. For them to do this to us now just makes me feel sorry for (those people),' Ivan Kovalchuk, a firefighter involved in the 1986 cleanup, remarked. Southward, in Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia Oblast — a city where nearly a quarter of the 53,000 residents worked at Europe's largest nuclear plant — efforts unfolded to defend the plant and prevent another occupation of a nuclear facility. Plokhy recounts how the initial Russian attempt to seize the city was thwarted by defiant locals who outright rejected them. Russian forces, "surprised not to have been welcomed," initially turned back before launching their assault. As Russian forces opened fire on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Plokhy writes, its employees scrambled to reduce the power level of an active reactor, broadcasting a desperate plea over the loudspeaker: 'Stop shooting at a dangerous nuclear facility! Stop shooting immediately! You are threatening the security of the whole world!' The warning went unheeded. Citing reports from Ukrainian military intelligence, Plokhy also writes about how Russian occupiers mined the area surrounding the plant. Those remaining in Enerhodar are forced to take Russian passports under threat of violence. One of the most striking critiques in Plokhy's book is his examination of the IAEA's muted response at the onset of the full-scale war. While Ukrainian nuclear plant workers pushed themselves to the brink, both physically and mentally, to avert a global catastrophe, the IAEA initially refrained from directly condemning Russia for its nuclear blackmail, a silence that raises troubling questions about accountability. One example is Director General Rafael Grossi's statement on Feb. 25, 2022, when he referred to 'unidentified armed forces' at the nuclear plant. While there were technically no insignia identifying the soldiers as Russian citizens, as was the case during the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, 'everyone knew who the occupiers were' at that point, as Plokhy writes. The IAEA 'would take not hours or days but weeks' to condemn Russia by name. Join our community Support independent journalism in Ukraine. Join us in this fight. Support us Even in the aftermath of the recent Feb. 14 attack, which penetrated the sarcophagus, the IAEA did nothing to condemn Russia. In a post on X, the official account's statement only read that 'the IAEA team at the Chornobyl site heard an explosion' and that they 'were informed' that a drone had struck the roof. One possible explanation for the IAEA's measured response could lie in its relationship with Russia itself. As Plokhy points out, Russia plays a significant role as a major donor to the IAEA. Moreover, one of Director General Grossi's six deputy directors, Mikhail Chudakov, is a seasoned figure from Russia's nuclear industry. Chudakov's role at the IAEA has raised significant concerns about conflicts of interest, particularly due to his leadership of its Department of Nuclear Energy. This department, which oversees the expansion of nuclear energy into new markets, aligns with the strategic interests of companies like Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear energy giant with which Chudakov had prior professional associations. 'It was only the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War and Rosatom's involvement in the takeover of the Chernobyl nuclear plant that attracted global attention to Grossi's deputy,' Plokhy writes. The Swiss energy counselor wrote to Grossi, urging that Chudakov be excluded from any dealings related to Ukraine and that his access to classified information be restricted. As of this book review, however, Chudakov remains one of Grossi's deputy director generals and continues to lead the IAEA's Department of Nuclear Energy. The success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in northern Kyiv Oblast led to the Russian withdrawal from Chornobyl by the end of March 2022. Simultaneously, several Russian soldiers were diagnosed with acute radiation poisoning, as it was later revealed that they had been digging fortifications in the Red Forest, one of the most highly contaminated areas on the planet. Russian soldiers' ignorance led them to believe they were invading Ukraine to "save" its people, just as they were wrong in their understanding of the plant's operations, convinced that American-supplied plutonium for Ukrainian nuclear weapons could be stored there without the knowledge of international organizations like the IAEA. Despite the plant workers repeatedly exposing their ignorance during the occupation, the Russian soldiers remained steadfast in their delusions, even attempting — unsuccessfully — to recruit some as collaborators. Although another catastrophe at Chornobyl has been avoided, the ongoing Russian aerial attacks and the occupation of Europe's largest nuclear plant in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Oblast underscore the precariousness of the situation and Russia's continued nuclear blackmail against the world. Meanwhile, Russia's continued membership in organizations like the United Nations and the IAEA raises doubts about the effectiveness and integrity of the international institutions meant to avoid such conflicts. Regardless of how the coming weeks and months unfold in the war, Plokhy warns that Russia's nuclear threats serve as a stark 'warning for the future' in an increasingly conflict-ridden world. Hi, this is Kate Tsurkan, thanks for reading this article. There is an ever-increasing amount of books about or related to Ukraine available to English-language readers, and I hope my recommendations prove useful when it comes to your next trip to the bookstore. Ukrainian culture has taken on an even more important meaning during wartime, so if you like reading about this sort of thing, Read also: 'Donbas is fiction' — Kateryna Zarembo's book dismantles Russian myths about Ukraine's east We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
