Here's why Russia and Ukraine are fighting for Chernobyl disaster site
, the still radioactive site of the world’s worst nuclear accident and a factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“It was the quickest way from A to B,” said James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.“doesn’t have any military significance” but sits on the shortest route from Belarus to Kyiv, the target of a Russian “decapitation” strategy to oust the Ukrainian government. The radioactive strontium, caesium and plutonium mainly affected Ukraine and neighboring Belarus, as well as parts of Russia and Europe. Estimates for the numbers of direct and indirect deaths from the disaster vary from the low thousands to as many as 93,000 extra cancer deaths worldwide.
The catastrophe was widely seen as contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union just a few years later.on Thursday was not to protect it from further damage, saying Ukraine’s four active nuclear power plants present a greater risk thanA make-shift cover, or “sarcophagus,” was built within six months of the disaster to cover the stricken reactor and protect the environment from radiation. In November 2016, a so-called “New Safe Confinement” was moved over the old sarcophagus.