Russia Hands Control of Chernobyl Back to Ukraine, Officials Say

Russia Hands Control of Chernobyl Back to Ukraine, Officials Say

Departure ends a five-week occupation of the site of the 1986 disaster that killed more than 30 people and contaminated the surrounding countryside

WSJ NEWSLETTER

 

All of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have been shut down since 2000.

PHOTO: JERZY DABROWSKI/ZUMA PRESS

 

By

James Marson   ,Drew Hinshaw

 

and Yana TashkevychMarch 31, 2022 6:16 pm ET

 

 

Russian forces transferred control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant back to Ukrainian authorities, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom and plant workers—who said the departing troops also had taken more than 100 Ukrainian national guardsmen away in trucks as prisoners of war.

The Russian troops began leaving in phases on Tuesday, and the entire Russian deployment had left the area by late Thursday. That concluded a five-week occupation of the defunct plant that began on the first afternoon of the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, when Russian troops arrived at the plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident.

Those Russian forces are now heading home for time off, or to reinforce efforts in the east of the country, said Valentin Heiko, the shift manager who led the Chernobyl staff working at gunpoint for a month before 64 of them were allowed to rotate out on March 20.

Some of the Russian forces who left were special forces initially intended to spend only a few days at the plant, he said.

 

Instead, they remained on site for more than a month, presiding over what became a hostage crisis, as the plant’s staff was forced to work for weeks without a shift change.

“They were only supposed to stay for a couple of days,” he said. “I think they will send them to Donbas.”

Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday they saw Russian military trucks and heavy weaponry on the road some 400 yards away from the Chernobyl plant complex.

The explosion of Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 4 in 1986 killed more than 30 people, contaminated large areas of the surrounding countryside and sent a plume of radioactive dust across Europe and North America.

The recent situation at the plant has been the subject of intense speculation since the Russians overran it. Ukraine’s intelligence agency claimed that Russia was preparing a false-flag attack on the exclusion zone—the 1,000-square-mile, mostly uninhabited area around the plant—to blame Ukraine as a pretext for escalating the war. Russian state media said Ukraine was close to building a plutonium-based “dirty bomb” at Chernobyl. Neither side provided evidence for its claims.

All of Chernobyl’s reactors have been shut down since 2000, but the plant still employs thousands of staff to keep cool water circulating over thousands of spent fuel rods kept in four-story-deep basins lined with steel and reinforced concrete.

One senior manager said that Chernobyl was now entirely unguarded and the shift workers had themselves locked the gates once the Russians had left. “The complex is left without armed guards,” the manager said.

 

Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com and Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com

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