Russian forces take control Chernobyl nuclear power plant

Russian military forces have seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukrainian officials say.

Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak said the “totally pointless attack” on Thursday amounted to “one of the most serious threats in Europe today”.

An explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 led to the worst nuclear disaster in human history, both in cost and casualty.

Ukraine’s president warned such a disaster could happen again if Russia continued its invasion.

“Our defenders are giving their lives so that the tragedy of 1986 will not be repeated,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote earlier on Twitter.

“This is a declaration of war against the whole of Europe.”

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also warned of the possibility of “another ecological disaster” at the site.

Ukrainian officials reported radiation levels had been “exceeded” in a number of places in the area, but Russia said that was not the case.

Chernobyl’s “exclusion zone” – a 32-km (19-mile) radius around the plant – remains largely devoid of human life, 36 years after a faulty reactor caused a major explosion at the plant.

The plant’s three other reactors were all shut down by 2000 and it has since been decommissioned.

Radiation levels in the area have remained higher than normal from the 1986 leak, chronicled in an eponymous HBO mini-series in 2019 that helped make the site a tourist attraction.

Russian troops reportedly entered the exclusion zone earlier on Thursday before crossing over into Ukraine.