“Forgotten” surveillance camera of the souvenir shop reveals Russian maneuvers in Chernobyl

news agency AP He released an archive of photos taken at a checkpoint at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in late February 2022. These are rare video recordings of the actions of the Russian military during the early days of the war.

The video was captured by a surveillance camera from a trading company that organizes tours of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The owner, Yaroslav Emelianenko, installed a camera in his shop a few months before the war, where souvenirs and postcards were sold. This store was near a checkpoint at the power station. And the Russian army, which occupied the area, closed all state surveillance cameras, but Emelianenko’s camera was not detected.

psychologically difficult

The camera continued to work for several days, until the battery ran out. The movements of the Russians were recorded at the barrier. The photos were sent to Emelianenko’s computer in an office in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and he counted the number of military vehicles that appeared in the photos. ‘a hundred. five hundred. Emelianenko said: He passed the information to contacts in the Ukrainian army and intelligence service. Emelianenko said it was “psychologically difficult” to look at the photos.

Russian forces occupy Chernobyl and the nuclear power plant by the end of the first day of the war.