Commercial satellite images published by an American public Earth-imaging company Planet Labs show a new ribbon bridge in the Chornobyl exclusion zone, on the South of Belarus.
US-based integrated aerospace and data analytics company released new images showing a new bridge having been constructed across the river Pripyat river in Belarus, near the Chornobyl nuclear power plant zone of alienation.
Areas of South of Belarus and North of Ukraine have been abandoned since the world’s worst nuclear disaster here three decades ago.
Established by the Soviet Armed Forces soon after the 1986 disaster, it initially existed as an area of 30 km (19 mi) radius from the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant designated for evacuation and placed under military control.
Recent satellite photos show that the Russian military is considering these radioactive lands as one of the options for an offensive into Ukraine, since this is the shortest distance to the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, and is not populated by a civilian.
This is understood by the official Kyiv, which previously kicked off a large-scale military exercise, where soldiers participated in a mock war scenario in areas of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster site.
According to a press release from Ukrainian National Guards, the exercise was held in the abandoned city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, near the Ukraine–Belarus border.
Guards, police and rescuers worked out the coherence of actions during the implementation of tasks for the defense of the settlement, the tactics of hostilities in urban areas and the elimination of their consequences, the release said.
A nuclear reactor at Chornobyl exploded in 1986, spewing tons of radioactive material into the air, and contaminating an area of thousands of miles around the reactor, spanning parts of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.