No one has lived in Chernobyl since the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986. But tens of thousands of Russian troops are gathering near the area at the Russian-Belarusian border. Ukrainian soldiers are patrolling the border too. But Ukrainian citizens wonder what is the need to defend the radioactive zone, where no one has lived for about 36 years. So what will happen to the CEZ or Chernobyl Exclusion Zone if and when there is an invasion and why is it crucial to defend it?
In the meantime, even as Belarusian and Russian troops take part in joint military exercises, Putin denies plans of an incursion into Ukraine. If an invasion does occur, Chernobyl could go through another cataclysmic event. The land as is cannot be inhabited for a hundred more years to come as the leak from a destroyed reactor poses a long-term threat to life. Moreover, could the accession of Chernobyl mean an impetus to Russian forces? This certainly makes the area vulnerable.
According to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Putin’s deployment of nearly 30,000 troops in the area is Russia’s biggest since the cold war, and their placement at Chernobyl makes about 2 hours away from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Chernobyl is also about 5 miles away from Kremlin. As Ukrainian forces practice drills at plywood cutouts, Denys Monastyrsky, Ukraine's internal affairs minister, CNN that security forces were using the Chernobyl exercises to demonstrate how far they have come in urban combat tactics since Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russian separatists seized a swathe of eastern Ukraine nearly eight years ago.
“It doesn’t matter if it is contaminated or nobody lives here,” said Lt. Col. Yuri Shakhraichuk of the Ukrainian border guard service. “It is our territory, our country, and we must defend it.” According to Shakhraichuk, should an invasion happen, the hollow city won't act as a rebuff against Russian troops. Though swampy and forested, it cannot entirely be ruled out as an invasion route.
