CHERNOBYL, Ukraine – More than a month after seizing the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Russian troops have left the facility, Ukrainian nuclear operator Energoatom said.
According to The Associated Press, Russian forces signed an agreement Thursday to hand over the plant, the company said. The document also said plant administrators had “no complaints” about the Russian forces who had been “guarding” the site – where the world’s worst nuclear disaster occurred in 1986 – since Feb. 24, the AP reported.
Energoatom added that Russian troops plan to leave the nearby city of Slavutych, as well, according to the news agency.
The company went on to claim that Russians who had dug trenches in the Red Forest, which is within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, prepared to leave after they were exposed to “significant doses of radiation” and possible illness, the AP reported. The AP was unable to independently confirm the claim.
The news came nearly two weeks after dozens of the plant’s staff members, who had been working for weeks, were finally allowed to leave the facility on March 20, officials said.
“Please be reminded that the employees were at their workplaces for about 600 hours, having heroically performed their professional duties and maintained the appropriate level of safety,” the plant announced in a Facebook post at the time.
The post added that 46 “employee-volunteers” replaced the evacuated personnel “to fulfill their work duties and to ensure the enterprise’s functionality.”
In a news release Thursday, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Ukraine “has not reported any staff rotation” since that announcement.
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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