Russian troops at Chernobyl suffer 'acute radiation sickness'

Hundreds of Russian soldiers were evacuated from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine to a Belarusian hospital after suffering “acute radiation sickness,” according to Ukrainian officials.

Energoatom, the Ukrainian agency in charge of its nuclear power plants, announced on its Telegram that most Russian soldiers at the old nuclear reactor had fled.

“It has been confirmed that the occupiers who seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and other facilities in the Exclusion Zone set off in two columns towards Ukraine’s border with Belarus. The occupiers announced their intentions to leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant this morning to the Ukrainian personnel of the station," the agency said, reported The Daily Beast.

The agency also confirmed reports that Russian forces had been digging trenches in the Red Forest, “the most polluted in the entire exclusion zone.”

“Not surprisingly, the occupiers received significant doses of radiation and panicked at the first sign of illness. And it showed up very quickly,” the agency said.

The area is named such because thousands of pine trees turned red during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It is considered so toxic that not even highly specialized Chernobyl workers are allowed to enter.

Russians claimed to be withdrawing from the area as part of its pledge to scale back the invasion near Kiev.

Reports said the sick soldiers arrived by bus in Gopul, Belarus on Thursday, according to The Daily Beast.

Other Ukrainian officials were not so polite.

"Another batch of irradiated terrorists who seized the Chernobyl zone was brought to the Belarusian Radiation Medicine Center in Gomel today,” Yaroslav Yemelianenko, an employee of the Public Council at the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management, said in a statement on Facebook.

"Have you dug trenches in the Red Forest, b******? Now live the rest of your short life with this. There are rules for handling this area. They are mandatory because radiation is physics — it works regardless of status or shoulder ranks."