The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone After Russian Invasion

KYIV OBLAST, UKRAINE – APRIL 25: An abandoned "Polissya" hotel stands in the city of Prypiat of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone on April 25, 2023 in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. Russian military troops entered the territory of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant at the end of February 2022, taking almost three hundred nuclear plant workers hostage and damaging the ChNPP administrative buildings. The trenches that Russian troops dug in the most radioactively contaminated 10-kilometer zone around the nuclear plant, known as the "Red Forest", are currently filled with water, after severe spring floods in Kyiv Oblast. The Russian military also left heaps of garbage, the destroyed vehicle fleet of the Nuclear Power Plant, mined territories and with their feet and equipment, spread radioactive dust throughout the territory of the Exclusion Zone. Currently, the Chоrnobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the Exclusion Zone require infrastructure restoration, demining of the territory, and correction of the territory radioactivity maps. (Footage by SLM News/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)