Unexpected War Warning System: Cameras of Chernobyl Tour

Imagine his surprise as he sat in his Kyiv apartment on Feb. 24 as his livestream showed dozens of Russian tanks heading south from Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear power disaster, toward the Ukrainian capital.

“In two hours, we saw a lot of Russian equipment on the cameras,” Yemelianenko, the founder of Chernobyl Tours, said on Tuesday.

The Russian army shut down all official government surveillance cameras, but failed to notice the small cameras Yemelenko installed to monitor stalls where his employees sold souvenirs and postcards to tourists.

Chernobyl tours have been taking visitors through the radioactive zone “exclusion zone” around the nuclear power plant, showing them the facility, a nearby city built by the Soviet Union to house workers and radioactive forests.

Yemelenko immediately decided to make his video available to the Ukrainian government. For several days, on battery power, Yemelyanenko and his colleagues monitored and transmitted data to the Ukrainian army every 10 to 15 minutes.

Frame grab from a battery-powered camera placed on the Chernobyl Tour. (Associated Press)

“Psychologically, it is difficult. On the one hand, we are sure that no one will enter Kyiv. At the same time, we have been counting (pieces) of Russian military equipment,” Yemelenko said in an interview.

Russian military equipment came in continuously, all displayed on video monitors. The tanks, along with trucks carrying troops and communications equipment, drove along the gray road past Yem Liannenko’s booth, which was emblazoned with a radiation symbol and his company’s English name. There was so much Russian equipment on the road that there was a traffic jam on the way to Kyiv, 94 miles (150 kilometers) away.

After a few days, the signal disappeared. Russian troops occupied the power plant, the site of the April 1986 nuclear disaster. But Yemelianenko and his team have developed an alternative — a network of informants in villages near Chernobyl. Although Russian troops have occupied the villages, locals have risked their lives to provide Yemelenko with details of the location of military equipment.

The Ukrainian army then took back control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Over time and the military focus shifted elsewhere, the videos have entered the public domain.

The video provides a rare first-hand look at Russia’s earliest incursion, when the plan was to occupy Kyiv. Russian troops withdrew from the capital in late March. Since then, Yemelianenko and his team have been volunteering in liberated villages, providing food and medicine.

While the risk of additional radiation leakage from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has been reduced, it is also in Zaporozhye, Ukraine, due to fighting near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.