Kyiv region could face radiation danger after at least 10,000 Russian military vehicles moved through the Exclusion Zone near Chernobyl over last five days, disturbing the heavily contaminated soil, said Exclusion Zone management agency head, Yevhen Kramarenko, in a briefing on Monday.

Among those were tanks, military armored vehicles, and fuel and support transport that went through heavily polluted areas near the Chernobyl site without any radiation level checks or safety gear.

It is feared that the active movements of Russian military vehicles has kicked up radioactive dust and that they have carried contaminated soil from the nuclear site into Kyiv region.

When Russian forces seized the Chernobyl defunct nuclear plant, they had nearly 1000 troops and 50 military vehicles stationed at the site with 500-600  military armored vehicles moving around the area on a daily basis.

The aggressors also dug earthworks around the Exclusion Zone and did so even in the Red Forest, known as one of the most contaminated places on the defunct nuclear plant site.

‘They were digging trenches for tanks, artillery, snipers. There is this feeling they were set to stay there for a long time’.

Kramarenko warned that the Russian earthworks in the Red Forest probably disturbed the contaminated soil that lies 30-40 cm deep, exposing the occupying soldiers to dangerous levels of radiation; these soldiers were swiftly taken back to Belarusian hospitals.

It is unclear how serious their radiation poisoning might be, but that is a ‘question for their doctors’.

According to Kramarenko, Russian troops were not fully aware of the risks of going into the Exclusion Zone, as they had been given some 50-year-old ‘weird square things’ in place of the proper equipment to detect radiation while Russian military commanders left them unprepared.