There has been no shortage of bumbling, imbecilic maneuvering by Russian troops in Ukraine, but the latest battlefield blunder might be their most idiotic yet.
Russia came into this conflict the clear favorite. After all, Americans remember just how potent an adversary the Soviet Union was in all of those cheesy 80’s action flicks…right?
Wrong. Instead of watching a highly-skilled, ruthless military machine making quick work of a much smaller nation, we’ve seen little old ladies taking out tanks with molotov cocktails and massive desertions by the Russian forces.
Now, in an even more dunce-like maneuver, Russia forces near Chernobyl may have accidentally nuked themselves.
Russian forces have kicked up radioactive dust and disturbed a highly toxic zone around the area of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site known as the “Red Forest” since capturing the defunct power plant early on in its invasion of Ukraine, workers at the site said.
Reuters spoke with workers who said Russian soldiers in a convoy did not use anti-radiation gear and inhaled toxic dust that will most likely cause internal radiation in their bodies. In the weeks after Russia took the site on Feb. 24, soldiers were still not wearing any protective gear, they said.
Two workers were on duty when Russian forces took control of the Chernobyl power plant, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster that’s considered the worst in history and became an international embarrassment for the Soviet Union. The Red Forest, a small area surrounding the power plant, is still highly contaminated.
Safety sensors in the area had previously indicated that the military convoy kicked up enough of this nuclear dust to be dangerous.
Some of the soldiers who entered the area told witnesses that they had never even heard of the Chernobyl disaster.
