The Decibel - In Chornobyl, after the Russian invasion

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

On the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, troops occupied Chornobyl. Since the nuclear disaster in 1986, the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the nuclear plant has been largely abandoned. But 38 years later, some Ukrainians still call the land home, including a handful of elderly residents and people who oversee the disused power plant.Janice Dickson, the Globe’s international affairs reporter, visited Chornobyl and the surrounding exclusion zone in April. She’s on the podcast to talk about what she saw there, and how Ukraine is dealing with the challenges of war, two years on.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

You know, there's pieces of metal laying about which have an increased level of radiation, so you can't touch that. There's also places that you just can't linger in too long. That's Janice Dixon, an international affairs reporter for The Globe. In order to visit Chernobyl's exclusion zone, you have to travel with a tour guide which might seem unusual for a journalism assignment but the purpose of having a guide is they really show you where you can and can't walk. We walked through Pripyat, the town that was totally abandoned after the nuclear explosion. It was really eerie walking around there. On a recent reporting trip to Ukraine, Janice visited Chernobyl, the site of one of the world's worst nuclear disasters in 1986.

I feel like those are the images that really come to someone's mind when they're thinking of Chernobyl is this, you know, the fun park, a huge Ferris wheel and rides. And, you know, you can see remnants of the past that's just totally overgrown now. But the best way to describe being in and about Chernobyl is just, you know, a really sort of unusual, eerie feeling where, know that so much has happened, there was so much life that existed there at one time, and how that came to such an abrupt end. On the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian troops occupied the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the surrounding exclusion zone. They held it until the end of March 2022.

Today, Janice is here to talk about what she saw in Chernobyl, what she heard from people still living there, and how Ukrainians are handling the war more than two years on. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Janice, great to have you here. Great to be here. So you were recently reporting from Ukraine. Why did you go to Chernobyl specifically, though? I had read about Russia's occupation of Chernobyl, and I was curious about what happened there. But in addition to that, when I was in Kiev, I met Ukraine's energy minister, and he was telling me about Russia's

occupation of Zaporizhia power plant in the south, which is ongoing, and what they did in Chernobyl and how they behave there. He said they took forks, they literally took everything. He described them as, you know, people sort of seeing something for the first time. Yeah. So just set it up for us geographically. Where is Chernobyl? So it's in northern Ukraine, just along the border of Belarus. So you can see why, you know, it was so easy for Russian troops to invade from that direction because they came over the border from Belarus. Okay. And of course, the nuclear plant is not operational because of the disaster that happened there in 1986. Janice, can you just take us back and just remind us what happened at that time?

That's right. So it was an explosion following a test that went out of control and resulted in large amounts of radiation releasing into the atmosphere. Approximately 100,000 or more people evacuated following that incident. It was famously covered up by the Soviets at the time. Residents of Pripyat, where the abandoned amusement park is located, were all forced to evacuate. So it had a massive and devastating impact on the area. But, you know, some residents did return. So after the disaster happened, I mean, when and why did people return there? So we spoke with a few people who live in Chernobyl city. And, you know, they told us that they returned within months after this incident happened. And, you know, they told us that they returned within months after this incident happened.

And, you know, their reasons was their love for their homes and just wanting to return. Wow. So even though they're back there, though, there must still be risks to being in that space? Well, there's a 30-kilometer exclusion zone that's set up around the plant. There are risks. And I'm thinking of this particular area where the Russian troops actually dug trenches in this red forest that's particularly contaminated. And our guide said the max that you can be exposed to that area in general is five minutes. But what happens to you if you have long exposure to radiation is a challenging question, I think. And, you know, these elderly civilians that we met, they were sort of like, well, we're not fearful. We grow vegetables in the soil that's contaminated.

We fish in the water that's contaminated. Their message was, we're still here and obviously we're fine. But there are so many rules to visiting that area. I there obviously is risk to exposure over time, but it's a risk that people living there are obviously willing to take. What did they tell you, the people that you met there before the Russian invasion in 2022, what was life like for people living there? I think it was quiet, peaceful. They spend a lot of time gardening, fishing. We spoke with a few neighbors. They knew each other. They had pets. They're visited by their relatives. They're also visited a lot by tourists because similarly, tourists are interested in knowing what it was like living through Chernobyl. So, yeah, it was, you know, very peaceful and very quiet.

And then, of course, Russian troops took Chernobyl on the first day of the invasion in February 2022. So the people who were in the plant at the time, because they did take over the nuclear power plant, what did the people working there see? Yeah, so we spoke with a few plant employees and, you know, they described Russian soldiers taking over the plant, following employees around armed, drinking. One man I spoke with said that, you know, he would just avoid the cafeteria at night entirely because he didn't want to be around drunk Russian soldiers. We spoke with an engineer who, she was in charge of security for Chernobyl plant. So she actually saw the moment that Russian troops arrived through the security screen footage of their tanks and destroying fences and approaching. And she described working for a month straight, not leaving. And of course, plant workers similarly are meant to only

be there for two weeks at a time to limit their exposure also to radiation. So they slept on tables. They worked just constantly, but they felt like they had to and they wanted to do everything that they could, but yeah, under enormous pressure. And I guess we should say, so the work that they do there, it's not like it's still a functioning plant, but it's more kind of cleanup after it was used as an energy source. Exactly. So in addition to the engineer, the other individual we spoke to said he was in charge of recycling nuclear waste. So that's people in the plant. What about the regular people that we were talking about before? What did they experience when these Russian soldiers came into town? Yeah, so they described Russian soldiers, you know, patrolling their neighborhood and really having no idea why they were there.

They said that they were young, that they had told them they wanted to go home to their mothers. So the Russian soldiers saying they didn't really know why they were there. This was at least one group of soldiers, because I know that throughout that time, there were sort of multiple rotations of different groups that were described in different ways by both the employees and the residents there. But the residents said that they were, you know, largely left alone. However, one woman mentioned that there's a nearby building that had snipers on top of the roof that sort of overlooked their yards. And she had to go, you know, her toilet was outside in her yard and she felt like, you know, I move so slowly, they could target me at any time. It's going to be pretty scary for people to kind of feel

that presence there, though. Yeah, you can really sort of get that mental image of this woman moving slowly to the washroom as a Russian sniper is just staring at her. And it's just, I can imagine that that would be pretty terrifying. I think one couple you spoke to encountered troops actually on their way out of town as well. Can you tell me about that, Like what that interaction was like? Well, they said that, you know, towards the end of March, some soldiers came by and said, which way to Belarus? And, you know, the couple was kind of laughing as they told the story, because they thought, you know, they don't know how to get home, they're probably going to die trying to find it. We'll be back after this message.

Okay, Janice, let's talk a little bit more about what we know or what people said the Russian troops actually did while they were in Chernobyl. Do we know, I guess, you know, day to day, kind of what were some of the things that they did? Yeah, so at the plant, the staff there said that they, you know, they were pocketing radioactive material, and just sort of stealing everything in sight. There was a laboratory nearby, and they damaged everything, computers, files, they took a lot of stuff really for no reason, you know, stuff that wouldn't be any of any sort of beneficial use to Russians because they're so specific to that plant. The one gentleman I spoke to that worked at the plant said that they tried to scare some of the younger soldiers a little bit by saying, you know, that's radioactive and that's

radioactive. And even though they actually were pocketing things that were dangerous, they were also trying to scare them in general. And there was something about them digging in the Red Forest. Can you tell me like, yeah, what is the Red Forest and what were they doing? So the Red Forest is the most contaminated land in the area. And there were soldiers digging trenches, so defensive positions in this highly contaminated land, which when we drove by, we stopped and our photographer took took a few photos. But our guide said, we really can't hang out here very long. And so they were digging trenches there. And, you know, the engineer told us that she saw, you know, Russian soldiers leaving and exhibiting symptoms of radiation sickness, so vomiting, and that sort of thing. And there have been quite a few reports of that.

Wow. And she said she also heard a military leader tell soldiers misleadingly, you know, that their comrades had been taken because they were sick because they had eaten radioactive deer meat. Of course, when the engineers were calling the story, she's suggesting that this commander made this up to try and cover up the fact that they were sick because of their own, you know, their own doing. Yeah. the fact that they were sick because of their own, you know, their own doing. There's, of course, also the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant also in Ukraine. What are the concerns with having a plant like that occupied by soldiers, by Russia? Yeah, well, having an occupied nuclear power plant, I mean, it makes it extremely dangerous to have that in the middle of an active conflict, but very challenging for Ukraine too, because it's, they're trying to get their land back and there's this plant that's,

you know, incredibly dangerous in the middle of fighting. It's an enormous challenge. And so that's why Ukraine is constantly calling on Russian troops to leave, calling on the international community to kick the Russian troops out of there. And I interviewed the head of Ukraine's nuclear state energy company, and he was saying that most of the staff that still work there, so there are some Ukrainian staff that are still there, but they've taken Rose Adams' contracts. That's the Russian nuclear agency of some kind. Yeah, that they're really lower level staff that were not responsible for safety and security. And so their concerns were that, you know, there's really not very many people there that are familiar with it, can run it. And so in September 2022, it was shut down for safety concerns, but it still requires a lot of maintenance. And there are mines around the plant and, you know, animals step on mines, they blow up, it damages power lines, the power lines are needed for cooling purposes. And it's just a very

unpredictable and dangerous situation. Yeah. Wow. Of course, Janice, this war has been going on for more than two years now. I'm just curious, when you were in Ukraine, what was the mood like? So at the time, all of the Ukrainians were really hoping for the US military aid that was just passed recently. And so at the time, it was a bit grim because it hadn't been passed. There was uncertainty. Russian troops were gaining momentum and taking more Ukrainian land. And they've continued to because this delay in aid really gave Russian troops quite a bit of an advantage on the battlefield. And at the same time, Ukraine needs more troops. And so they launched a mobilization campaign and started mobilizing younger Ukrainian men. So previously the age was 27. They lowered the age to 25. So basically anyone. A lot of young men that we spoke to didn't want to fight. And honestly, they didn't like the way that the mobilization campaign was being rolled out because we talked to one man, for instance, who was just pulled off a bus on his way to work and told, you know, you have to report to the Territorial Defense Center.

And so I think the lack of aid coupled with people losing loved ones and friends is really a terrible recipe for morale. Just lastly here, Janice, what are you watching for next in this conflict? The fear is that Russian troops are expected to launch a pretty significant offensive. And there are some key cities that they're after that are important military distribution sites, but also access and entry points to other cities and towns deeper into Ukraine. So I know that the real concern right now is that they're going to gain momentum, gain more ground, and I'm watching to see how that will unfold. Janice, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our intern is Aja Sauter. Michal Stein produced this episode. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.