Trenches in the Red Forest: an information and psychological operation.

Reports reached us from the occupied Zone that russian soldiers were digging trenches in the Red Forest, one of the most contaminated places in the Zone. We talked about it in every Ukrainian and foreign outlet that asked.

A year later Yaroslav Yemelianenko explained: it was a deliberate psychological campaign. The danger was exaggerated with two goals - to reassure Ukrainians and to sow panic among the invaders. According to him, the rumors spread across russia and Belarus, and units at the plant even came to blows.

The IAEA later measured 6.5 millisieverts per year in the trenches. More than in the surrounding area, but far below the limit allowed for staff of radiation facilities. The real harm, Yaroslav says, the russians did to themselves in another way: they looted the Zone's laboratories and carried off dosimetry equipment together with powerful radiation test sources.