Prior to Invasion, Russian Agents May Have Infilitrated Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster Site

Reuters investigated the strange thing that happened when Russia's invading armored vehicles reached Chernobyl, "a key staging post on the approach to Kyiv," on February 24th. "In less than two hours, and without a fight, the 169 members of the Ukrainian National Guard laid down their weapons." The fall of Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, stands out as an anomaly in the five-month old war: a successful blitzkrieg operation in a conflict marked elsewhere by a brutal and halting advance by Russian troops and grinding resistance by Ukraine. Now a Reuters investigation has found that Russia's success at Chernobylwas no accident, but part of a long-standing Kremlin operation to infiltrate the Ukrainian state with secret agents.... One source with direct knowledge of the Kremlin's invasion plans told Reuters that Russian agents were deployed to Chernobyl last year to bribe officials and prepare the ground for a bloodless takeover. Reuters couldn't independently verify the details of this assertion. However, Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation has said it is investigating a former top intelligence official, Andriy Naumov, on suspicion of treason for passing Chernobyl security secrets to a foreign state.... A review of Ukrainian testimony and court documents and an interview with a local official show that Kyiv is conducting at least three investigations into the conduct of people who worked at Chernobyl. The investigations have identified at least two people suspected of providing information to Russian agents or otherwise helping them seize the plant, according to these documents.... For Russia's war planners, seizing Chernobyl was just a stepping stone to the main objective: taking control of the Ukrainian national government in Kyiv. There, too, the Kremlin expected that undercover agents in positions of power would play a crucial part, according to four sources with knowledge of the plan. It's been said that journalism is a first draft of history. And Reuters is already wondering how this affected the invasion's ultimate outcome:Five people with knowledge of the Kremlin's preparations said war planners around President Vladimir Putin believed that, aided by these agents, Russia would require only a small military force and a few days to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's administration to quit, flee or capitulate.... At a national level, sources with knowledge of the Kremlin's plans said Moscow was counting on activating sleeper agents inside the Ukrainian security apparatus... Though Russia captured Chernobyl, its plan to take power in Kyiv failed. In many cases, the sleeper agents Moscow had installed failed to do their job, according to multiple sources in Russia and Ukraine.... People the Kremlin counted on as its proxies in Ukraine overstated their influence in the years leading up to the invasion, said four of the sources with knowledge of the Kremlin's preparations. The Kremlin relied in its planning on "clowns - they know a little bit, but they always say what the leadership wants to hear because otherwise they won't get paid," said one of the four, a person close to the Moscow-backed separatist leadership in eastern Ukraine. Putin now finds himself in a protracted, full-scale war, fighting for every inch of territory at huge cost.

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