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11th Apr 2022

Putin’s forces leave chilling signs in Chernobyl reading ‘expect a surprise, look for a mine’

Kieran Galpin

Chernobyl

This comes after reports of Russian soldiers suffering from radiation poisoning

Following their evacuation of Chernobyl, Russian soldiers are believed to have left a maze of landmines behind for Ukrainian forces.

Russian soldiers had occupied the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. Having evacuated on March 31, it’s now understood that they may have left traps behind.

According to video footage collated by the Ukrainian Witness media group – a project started to document Russia’s ongoing invasion – graffiti reading “this passage is mined” and “expect a surprise, look for a mine” has popped up throughout the complex.

“Our sappers are now working on the de-mining of key locations and checking everything it is possible to check,” Maksym Shevchuk, deputy head of Ukraine’s State Agency for Exclusion Zone Management, told the i. “For now people are using only well-known routes and asphalt roads’ in order to avoid any hidden landmines.”

Just last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of Russian forces laying mines throughout “the whole territory.”

“They are mining homes, mining equipment, even the bodies of people who were killed,” he said. “There are a lot of trip wires, a lot of other dangers.”

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While Russian forces had held the infamous power plant for over a month, that isn’t to say they didn’t suffer whilst there.

A member of the Exclusion Zone management team previously reported that Russian soldiers had been taken to the Belarusian Centre for Radiation Medicine and Human Ecology on March 31 to be treated for radiation poisoning.

“Digging the trenches in the Rudu forest, b*****s? Now live the rest of your short life with this,” wrote Yaroslav Yemelianenko on Facebook. “There are rules of handling this territory.”

He added: “They are mandatory to perform because radiation is physics – it works regardless of status or chases. If you have minimal intelligence in command or soldiers, these consequences could have been avoided. The land of the monkeys.”

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