On Friday, during urban warfare drills in Pripyat town, uninhabited since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear tragedy, Ukrainian soldiers shot at abandoned houses and threw grenades and mortars.
The drills were conducted by special forces, police, and the national guard near abandoned Soviet hotels and buildings, some of which have the hammer and sickle symbol. Before and during the exercises, a separate radiation control team made checks.
Ukraine has conducted drills to prepare for a possible military attack after Russia amassed more than 100,000 troops on its borders in recent weeks.
“This was a battle with irregular militias in (an) urban environment,” said a soldier, dressed in white camouflage gear, who did not provide his name.
Russia, which annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and supports separatists in the country’s east, denies preparing an invasion but is seeking security assurances, including a guarantee that Ukraine would never be admitted to the NATO military alliance.
Ukraine commemorated the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident on April 26, 2021, when a reactor at the facility 108 kilometers (67 miles) north of the capital Kyiv detonated during a failed safety test.
As a result, the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe occurred, causing clouds of radiation to spread across most of Europe.
Thirty-one plant workers and firefighters were killed in the incident’s immediate aftermath, most of whom perished from severe radiation illness.
Thousands more died subsequently from radiation-related ailments such as cancer; however, the actual death toll and long-term health impacts are still being debated.
The region surrounding the decommissioned nuclear facility is a wasteland of deserted buildings, scrubland, and wreckage. Pripyat originally housed 50,000 people, most of whom worked at the facility.