The Russians were so stupid in Chernobyl: In the middle of the war: look at the most polluted place in the world

“They were vomiting and had swollen faces.”

The ‘red forest’ is the most polluted zone in the limited area of ​​4,000 square kilometers. This is where most of the nuclear ash ended up after the 1986 reactor disaster, and this is where the acid rain seeped out. You can stay here for a maximum of five minutes, do not leave your car or touch anything. “But the Russians dug trenches there and camped there – for several weeks,” Ludmilla Kozak shouts, shaking her head in disbelief. “Their faces were swollen and very red.” They would have been puking the whole time. “I bet a lot of them aren’t alive today.” That suits them well.

The Russians withdrew at the end of March 2022. Ukrainian soldiers now control intersections and important buildings in the restricted area. Every photo Blick takes is checked by the Secret Service, so we don’t reveal military positions. Chernobyl, almost a two-hour drive north of Kiev, is one of the most highly secured places in Ukraine. No one wants to imagine what would happen if something went out of control in the world’s largest nuclear ruin.

On March 10, 2022, the time had almost come. The power supply has failed. Without electricity there is no cooling of the fuel rods. Without cooling there is an acute risk of further nuclear disasters. “We tried desperately to explain that to the Russians,” says Ludmilla Kozak. The fuel for the generators ran out. “So we convinced the soldiers to give us diesel from their military vehicles.” They actually did that. “Instead of the planned storm on Kiev, they used their diesel tanks for the emergency generators,” says Kozak. A double victory: Chernobyl remained safe – and the Russian military column came to a standstill.

Ten-day service in the atomic radiation zone

Blick meets the security chief and two of her employees in Slavutych, almost 50 kilometers from the nuclear ruins. This is where the nuclear workers were taken after the disaster in 1986. Everyone here has a job in the restricted area. Instead of being able to get there in just under an hour by train, as was the case before the war, Chernobyl survivors now have to make the difficult detour by bus via Kiev. The journey takes six hours. There is no alternative. The railway bridges were blown up. The Belarusian border, over which the train to Chernobyl chugged, is closed.

Instead of coming home in the evening as before, he and his colleagues now have to stay in Chernobyl for ten days each, says Oleksander Cherepanov (42). The bald man with ice gray eyes is a specialist in radioactive waste. “This work rhythm has destroyed my family,” he says. “I was gone for ten days, then my wife was gone for ten days, that didn’t work.”

He still remembers well the Russians who held him captive for 45 days. “One day they filmed a propaganda video for their TV station and dressed up as Chernobyl employees,” Cherepanov says, laughing. “They almost burst out of the protective suits that were way too tight.” And when they found the iodine tablets for the nuclear emergency and asked what they were, he told them: “Erection pills! You should definitely try it.”

Chernobyl residents: “We have sex every day – despite the radioactivity”

In Chernobyl, many things look the same as they did before the Russian attack. The polluted Pripyat River flows peacefully through its channel. The cranes around the never-completed Reactor 5 stretch their rusty arms into the winter air. New are the terrifying dolls along the side of the road, pointing their fake weapons at the landscape. Military scarecrows.

But there is no one left to scare. The Russians have withdrawn. “Fortunately,” says Tamara Petrovic (59). She and her husband Vasil are among the few people who returned to their small house with a large garden in the middle of the exclusion zone after the reactor accident, despite government warnings. “The radioactivity does not harm us. I am 71 and we still have sex every day,” her husband Vasil jokes and gives the Blick reporter a glass of honey. “From the Chernobyl bees, wonderfully sweet!”

The tourists who stumbled through the area in their thousands before the war with their Geiger counters missed them and were funny, says Tamara Petkovic. “We hope they come back soon.” But the Russians must stay where they are. “They have no place here in our beautiful homeland.”