What Russia Is Stirring Up at Chernobyl
The Russian military’s capture of the Chernobyl nuclear facility in northern Ukraine last week led to heightened levels of both radioactivity and confusion. Since the infamous 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, which sent nuclear materials as high as five miles into the atmosphere and likely condemned far more people than the United Nations’ projected long-term death toll of 4,000, the plant has been radioactive. It’s defunct. Why would the Russian military want it?
Maybe Russian forces overtook the facility for the sake of convenience—after all, it’s along the route from Russian ally Belarus to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, which is now . Or maybe, as Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed, the military wanted to protect the plant’s infrastructure, preventing any staging of a “nuclear provocation.” Or maybe, , it was a warning to NATO.
