Petro Kotin is the chairman of the State Nuclear Energy Company. He spoke on our antenna this Friday morning, the day after the departure of Russian troops from the Chernobyl station, that they had left because of their radiation treatment on site.
The Russian army left the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine on Thursday, but took local hostages in its wake. Interviewed in duplex this Friday morning by our journalist Bruce Toussaint, Petro Kotin, president of the joint-stock company of Nuclear Energy of Ukraine (Energoatom), confirmed the announcements made the day before by the authorities of his country. Above all, he confirmed that this withdrawal occurred after the Kremlin soldiers “realized their significant irradiation”.
Suspicious “stains”
The day after the departure of the Russian troops that had captured the Chernobyl nuclear power plant – unfortunately famous for the disaster after the explosion in 1986 – Ukrainian specialists rushed to the site to start a tour of the owner and repair possible damage .
“Our employees are investigating the station, they haven’t notified us yet, but we also have demining teams investigating the site because you never know, there could be mines,” said Petro Kotin, president of the Public Nuclear Energy Company. (Energoatom) on BFMTV.
But, according to him, the first elements made it possible to identify “radiation spots on the site.” “It means they may have entered a highly irradiated area. This may be why they left the station realizing that they had been irradiated in a significant way,” he concludes.
‘They didn’t understand what they were doing’
For him, it is not a possible malice or intention of sabotage that is at the root of this recklessness, but a lack of information. “The Russian soldiers on the ground had an extremely low level of information and awareness. They are soldiers, not physicists or engineers. They did not understand what they were doing,” said Petro Kotin.
He then clarified: “The Russians entered the forest, the most irradiated area during the disaster, here the pieces of fuel had fallen after the explosion. There are also cemeteries with high-level nuclear waste”. What was the Russian army doing in these forests? “They were building fortifications in this forest where the radioactivity is so high,” advanced Petro Kotin who, admitting he couldn’t certify it, cited cases of “disease” due to radioactivity in the invader’s ranks.
“Even staying in this forest for 24 hours is enough to be sick,” he explained.
“Significant Doses”
The intervention of Petro Kotin comes the day after the first statements of the institution he represents, passed on Twitter by the correspondent of the World, Faustina Vincent. According to Ukraine’s national electricity company Energoatom, Russian soldiers began evacuating the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after receiving “significant doses” of radiation while digging trenches at the highly contaminated site.
Petro Kotin also gave more details about the departure of the Russians: “They started to leave yesterday. One column left the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and another left the city where the station workers live. They are already today. “Today at the border with White -Russia. According to our information, they took some hostages from the National Guard who were guarding the station when it was taken,” he noted.
