Russia environmentalists visit radioactive forests threatened by fires
By Vladimir Slivyak, 21 August 2010; translated by Maria Kaminskaya MOSCOW – Last Wednesday, August 18, a group of journalists and environmentalists joined representatives of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations (MChS) to visit Bryansk – a region in Central European Russia where wildfires threatened to spread into areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl fallout, releasing radiation. The following is a first-person account of the trip by one of Bellona’s regular contributors, co-chairman of the ecological group Ecodefense!, who was among the participating environmentalists.
… Or rather, it had all started back on Tuesday, when an extremely aggressively-toned letter addressed to Ecodefense! arrived from the MChS. The letter began with a series of angry rebukes and finished off with an invitation to visit radioactively contaminated forests in Bryansk Region to see for ourselves what the situation was there. Earlier, the previous Friday, the Russian media had broadcast a demand from Minister for Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu to get to the source of those “rumours” about fires spreading through the radioactively contaminated forests of Bryansk Region, and that was followed by a shutdown of the official website of the state Russian forestry agency Roslesozashchita. That same website where on August 6 official data had been posted on fires spreading through Russian regions that have been partially contaminated by the fallout from Chernobyl, as well as recommendations for regional authorities on how to best keep the local population informed and protected. A certain piquancy was added to the situation by the fact that just prior to these events, Shoigu had himself made statements warning of the danger of fires breaking out in forests in the contaminated areas. …
