Ukrainian forces conduct live urban warfare drills in abandoned Chernobyl city
Ukrainian troops have been carrying out urban warfare drills in an abandoned city left deserted after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Soldiers dressed in white camouflage gear held exercises on the empty streets of Pripyat on Friday, surrounded by old Soviet hotels and buildings, some of which still display the hammer and sickle.
Members of the special forces, police and national guard also fired at buildings and launched grenades and mortars during the drills.
A special radiation control unit made checks before during and after the exercises to make it was safe for troops to be there.
‘This was a battle with irregular militias in (an) urban environment,’ said one of the soldiers, who did not provide his name.
The drills have been carried out as Ukraine braces for a possible invasion from Russia which has amassed more than 100,000 troops near its borders in recent weeks.
Russia denies planning to attack but satellite images of the area, show camps of soldiers, tanks, ammunition and airpower near Ukraine and in Belarus and Crimea.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin is demanding security guarantees including a promise that Ukraine will not be allowed to join the NATO military alliance.
Mr Putin first issued the demands in December but both the US and NATO have refused to give in.
On April 26 last year, Ukraine marked the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, when reactor 4 at the plant 67 miles north of the capital Kyiv exploded during a botched safety test.
The result was the world’s worst nuclear accident and it sent huge clouds of radiation across much of Europe.
Some 31 plant workers and firemen died in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, mostly from acute radiation sickness.
Thousands more later succumbed to radiation-related illnesses such as cancer, although the total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of debate.
Pripyat, once home to 50,000 people who mostly worked at the plant, was evacuated and has been a ghost city ever since.
Most of the area around the abandoned nuclear plant is a wilderness of empty buildings, scrubland and rubble.
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