“Tomorrow you are going to Ukraine to fuck up some shit,” a Russian commander told Corporal Nikita Chabin, a twenty-seven-year-old soldier in a unit posted on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. The “shit” happened to be radioactive. That task force moved not only between the Chernobyl exclusion zone and the Prypiat marshes to the west of it but also through the exclusion zone itself. There were nineteen battalion-strength tactical groups altogether, or close to 15,000 troops, crossing the Ukrainian border from the region of Homel, northeast of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Nine battalion-strength tactical groups, consisting of up to 8,000 officers and soldiers, began advancing from Belarus toward Kyiv, departing from their positions northwest of the exclusion zone.
The Russian movement toward the border began a few hours after midnight. The 35th Russian Combined Arms Army began the assault west of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The 104th paratrooper assault regiment from Pskov, reinforced by units of riot police and rapid-response police from the Russian city of Belgorod, was ordered to start moving from a military testing ground in Belarus north-west of the exclusion zone toward the Ukrainian border at 1:33 a.m. Their column of eighty-two vehicles, more than four kilometers (2 1⁄2 miles) in length, proceeded at the head of a much longer column of Russian troops numbering altogether 495 vehicles and extending as long as 25 kilometers (15.5 miles). At 3:15 a.m. the column had to cross the Prypiat River via a pontoon bridge; 45 minutes later it approached the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, heading from there to Prypiat and Chernobyl. Its ultimate destination was Kyiv.
The 36th Russian Combined Arms Army along with other troops moved into the Chernobyl zone from a narrow corridor of Belarusian territory that extended into Ukraine between Slavutych and Prypiat. Colonel D. Yershov, who commanded one of the columns, began his advance toward the border from positions near the Belarusian village of Krasnoe, located a few dozen kilometers west of Slavutych. They began their advance at 5:00 a.m., crossing the border about 7:30 p.m. on the same day. The column proceeded through the Chernobyl exclusion zone during the night but got stuck near the village of Cherevach, as the Ukrainian armed forces had partly destroyed a bridge across the Uzh River near the village. It took the unit four hours, until midday of February 25, to cross the river. At that point, the unit was still in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Serhii Plokhy
Serhii Plokhy is author of “Chernobyl Roulette: A War Story”, published by Allen Lane, Penguin Press
This excerpt is reprinted with permission from Allen Lane, Penguin Press
