Inside Chernobyls wasteland as 80,000 Russian troops poised to march through radioactive zone

A NEW chill haunts the desolate radioactive wasteland on the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in northern Ukraine. The very name of the town - Chernobyl - became a Doomsday watchword when its atom plant exploded in 1986, belching an invisible pall of radiation which claimed 16,000 lives. But 36 years later, benighted locals living near the wrecked reactor were facing the terrifyingly tangible threat of a vast Russian army last night. Around 80,000 of Vladimir Putin’s troops and their allies are now camped a short distance across Ukraine’s northern border with Belarus, with thousands more pouring in every day. The deserted 1,000-square-mile Chernobyl exclusion zone presents their shortest and swiftest path to Ukraine’s capital Kiev. Kremlin warlords insist troops, tanks and missile batteries arriving by train are taking part in military exercises and pose no threat to Ukraine. But the zone declared uninhabitable around the reactor core since its meltdown has become strategically vital as Ukrain