Russian troops began leaving the Chernobyl nuclear plant after soldiers got “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches at the highly contaminated site, Ukraine’s state power company said Thursday as fighting raged on the outskirts of Kyiv and other fronts.
Energoatom gave no details on the condition of the troops or how many were affected. But it said the Russians had dug in in the forest inside the exclusion zone around the now-closed plant, the site in 1986 of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
The troops “panicked at the first sign of illness,” which “showed up very quickly,” and began preparing to leave, Energoatom said.
Some of the Russian troops are supposedly being treated for radiation poisoning in Belarus, possibly so the Russians can try to limit the news from getting back home.
7 busses with Russian soldiers suffering from Acute Radiation Syndrome have arrived to a hospital in Belarus from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 30, 2022
They allegedly dug trenches in the highly radioactive Red Forest - UNIAN News Agency pic.twitter.com/3ZcqoF6c9I
The Red Forest is one of the most contaminated places on the planet. I can understand that Russian conscripts might not know the history of Chernobyl, but the army commanders should have known. It's either stupidty or more evidence that the age-old Russian cavalier attitude towards their soldiers has not changed.
They might never have heard of Chernobyl due to the control of the press which is prevalent in authoritarian states. They don't want the people to know of their incompetency. TFG could only dream of having that kind of control and the results would have been the same.
ReplyDeleteUnseen, unspoken, is the demonstration this guy doesn't give a flying fig about anybody. There's no doubt in my mind if cornered, if losing, he'll crack that dome and irradiate half his people knowing a quarter of that radiation will reach the West Coast, ten percent the Heartland, and maybe kill a few people but otherwise make most of us even more miserable.
ReplyDeleteI know a guy that once capped off a fire extinguisher in a room full of antagonists in full knowledge of the potential harm to both himself and the antagonists, his only advantage is he in that instant knew what he was doing while the antagonists did not. He's suffered, down through the years ... but it got him out of there.
Doesn't care what happened to the antagonists ...