Ukraine, the Sky TG24 report from Chernobyl: from the nuclear power plant to Prypiat. PHOTO

To visit Chernobyl it is a journey into our past. The nuclear explosion of the 1986, the great fear that spreads throughout Europe. The area is still off limits

WATCH THE VIDEO: Ukraine crisis, women are preparing for war

One first safety area 60 kilometers in diameter and then one exclusion zone 20 kilometers in diameter, inside which you cannot stay overnight

Letters from Ukraine, the report by Sky TG24

To enter there are checks customs and police. You are provided with a radioactivity detector and you enter only accompanied by a guide

Photos of Chernobyl and Prypiat, from the disaster to today

The first village we meet is Zalissyabefore the escape, 3 thousand people lived here, now the woods have enveloped the houses, the streets, even the imposing palace of Soviet culture

A mushroom grown in Chernobyl could allow life on Mars

After theevacuation some residents have returned to live here among them destroyed housesisolated, and remained there until their death in the early 2000s. From the windows you can still see the remains of the life that was

Ukraine, NYT: “A Russian invasion would cause thousands of deaths”

Continuing towards the nuclear power plant we make a detour to go and admire perhaps the most impressive of the industrial wrecks surviving Soviets to this day

WATCH THE VIDEO: Ukraine crisis, military exercises near Chernobyl

The other installations of this kind have in fact all been dismantled, this one not because it is in the Chernobyl area, inside which nothing can be touched. This is a huge installation of radarbuilt in the 70s with the aim of intercepting the American ballistic missiles before they could hit Soviet targets. 150 meters high, these radars extend for hundreds of meters

As you get closer you begin to see the signs of radioactivity. In the village of Kopachi most of the houses were destroyed and buried underground, wrapped in plastic. To remind them are a hill and the yellow signs that invite you to stay away

And finally there it is centralwith his four reactors, plus the fifth never completed. Here the tourists take a souvenir photo. Inside, 2,300 are still working. They have to keep the power plant alive so it doesn’t do any further damage

This alone costs the ruined coffers of the Ukrainian government 60 million a year. While to build the last cap to reactor 4, the one that exploded, it took over 2 billion euros

Ukraine did not have them, it had to ask a consortium of 40 foreign countries that helped it, also because the consequences of the radioactive waste of the plant extend well beyond the Ukrainian borders. For example, nearly half of the no-go zone is in Belarusian territory

Next to the power station is the heart of the visit, the city of Prypiatwhose 49,000 inhabitants were quickly evacuated less than two days after the tragedy

Prypiat was a model city forSoviet Union. Those who lived there had assigned a house with as many rooms as there were children of the family, there were the best engineers in the communist world, restaurants, theaters, 15 kindergartens and schools for children and the first supermarket in the Soviet universe.

All abandoned in a few hours, including the stadium never used and the playground most photographed in the world, with the big wheel that never came into operation, the world symbol of this tragedy

Now Chernobyl and Prypiat are one tourist destination important for Ukraine, before Covid the annual entries were at least 100 thousand

Yet thearmy continues to carry out its exercises in these streets, closing off access to the public for several days a month

A practice that meets the criticism and concern of guides and citizens, because the explosions they shooting are likely to lift radioactive material buried underground over the years with the hard work of 680,000 people who have paid, over the years, to clean up the area of ​​radioactive waste

Not only that, these places, spooky but extremely fascinating, are here for the future memory of one tragedy national and international

Ukrainians want them to become Unesco sitesand they hate to see them destroyed by the military, even if the soldiers train to defend the country from one possible Russian invasion