Retreating Russian troops laid landmines at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant which could cause a nuclear disaster in Europe.

According to footage collected by the Ukrainian Witness media group the troops who occupied Chernobyl wrote graffiti signs which read, “this passage is mined” and “expect a surprise, look for a mine.”

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There is a heightened risk at the nuclear power station for workers as if a landmine explodes then there could well be a radiation leak which would affect Ukraine including Russia and other European countries.

Maksym Shevchuk, deputy head of Ukraine’s State Agency for Exclusion Zone Management, told the i newspaper, “Our sappers are now working on the de-mining of key locations and checking everything it is possible to check.”

He added, that “for now people are using only well-known routes and asphalt roads”  to avoid any hidden landmines.

Valeriy Korshunov, founder of the Ukraine-based European Institute of Chernobyl, warned the nuclear fuel storage facility and other areas within the exclusion zone “may be mined.”

Patrick Regan, professor of radionuclide metrology at the University of Surrey, said, “The biggest worry for them is they weren’t getting the reports sent to the IAEA.

Ukraine’s energy minister says some of the Russian troops who occupied the Chernobyl nuclear power plant likely absorbed so much radiation that they now have just months to live. “Their ignorance is off the scale, just like the dosimeters.” https://t.co/A0yJEEWiLa pic.twitter.com/L9Sxp7cmX1

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) April 9, 2022

“They monitor the background levels all the time so if you don’t have that information, you can’t send that information on independently, and you can’t see what the radiation levels are on the ground there.

“If there was a big release [of radiation], you can’t hide that, you can measure it in Europe.

“There’s a very clean fingerprint, a gamma ray signature that tells you there’s a release of radioactive material linked to a nuclear fission fuel event.

“And there’s no reports of any of those at the moment.”

Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko following a visit to the Exclusion Zone and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, he said, “Every Russian soldier will bring a piece of Chernobyl home.

“Alive or dead.

“All the occupiers in the Exclusion Zone received large doses of radiation, and their military equipment was also contaminated.”

The Minister added, “The ignorance of Russian soldiers is as outrageous as the dosimeters we used to check the radiation background at the location of the invaders.

“They dug bare ground contaminated with radiation, collected radioactive sand in bags for fortifications, breathed this dust.  “After a month of such exposure, they have a maximum of one year of life. More precisely, not life, but slow death from diseases.”