Russia captured Chernobyl on the first day of the war and took its workers hostage.
Russia took over the first day of the Chernobyl war and took it hostage the soldiers of the National Guard of Ukraine and the workers of the nuclear power plant.
Employees interviewed by the BBC now report on everyday life under the Russian occupation.
According to them, Russian soldiers interrogated the workers violently from time to time. The soldiers wanted to know how the former nuclear power plant works.
– We had to negotiate with them constantly and not offend them in order to continue our work, engineer Valery Semonov told the BBC.
Semonov also says that sometimes Chernobyl was close to a major disaster. Once, electricity left the area for three days, and nuclear power plant workers had to steal fuel from Russian soldiers in order to keep the former nuclear power plant safe.
– If we had been left without electricity, the consequences could have been catastrophic. The radioactive material would have been released into the environment, responsible for the radiation safety of the nuclear power plant Oleksandr Lobada told the BBC.
Workers also tell how Russian soldiers dug trenches in radioactive soil, and even lived in them. According to the BBC, the soil in the Chernobyl region is one of the most radioactive in the world.
According to Energoatom, the Ukrainian nuclear energy organization, Russian soldiers were exposed to radiation with great certainty.