WASHINGTON - According to Ukrainian authorities, Russian forces have taken control of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in northern Ukraine, where the world's worst nuclear disaster occurred in 1986 and where large quantities of dangerous nuclear waste are still stored.
"After a bitter struggle, Ukraine has lost control of the Chernobyl site. The condition of the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant, containment, and nuclear waste storage sites is unknown," a plant official said Thursday afternoon, several hours after Russian troops advanced on the site across the Belarusian border.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Twitter that Chernobyl was under threat: "Our defenders are giving their lives so that the 1986 tragedy is not repeated." He called the move "a declaration of war on all of Europe."
When the reactor melted down during a test gone wrong in April 1986, a radioactive cloud covered much of the continent. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union at the time.
Chernobyl's strictly protected exclusion zone extends for nearly 20 miles around the reactor. Today, it includes ongoing safety measures, forests that have grown lush again, some small settlements where residents have refused to live, and the town of Pripyat, which was abandoned by power plant workers and their families in the days after the explosion.
Russian forces have reportedly entered the Chernobyl area across the border with Belarus. It is not clear how far the fighting affected the reactor itself, which is part of a larger nuclear power plant that is now being decommissioned.
Under the fabricated claim that Ukraine must be "demilitarized" and "denazified," Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched a general attack on his much smaller and less powerful neighbor. He is believed to be targeting the seat of power in the capital, Kyiv.
The raid has raised fears that fighting near the reactor could release harmful isotopes, originally confined by the Soviet Union in a concrete sarcophagus and more recently covered by a more modern protective dome estimated to cost $1.7 billion. The construction of the modern protective shell was largely funded by Europe.
A senior Ukrainian official told The New York Times that Ukrainian forces are "putting up fierce resistance" but fear that further fighting "could raise radioactive dust that could cover the territory of Ukraine, Belarus, and European Union countries."
Chernobyl has deep and painful symbolic meaning for Russians and Ukrainians alike. Considering how long radioactive material can cause damage, the land around Chernobyl may remain uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years.
The combination of incompetence and cruelty that led to the disaster - both vividly depicted in an acclaimed HBO miniseries that infuriated Russian authorities - led authorities to try to hide the extent of the destruction and is widely seen as the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union, whose image Putin is trying to rehabilitate.