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Chernobyl Breached! Russia’s Drone Strike on Nuclear History’s Most Dangerous Ruin

7 min readMay 8, 2025
Aerial view of Pripyat and Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant — Pripyat, Ukraine. Licensed by the author from Envato Elements.

News broke in February that should have sent shockwaves through global media but largely didn’t: on February 14, a Russian kamikaze drone struck the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Yes, that Chernobyl, site of the worst nuclear accident in human history.

The drone punched a hole in the sarcophagus that shields over 200 tons of radioactive material. Not a ding or a scratch. A hole big enough to toss an SUV through.

And what Russia just did is far worse than it seems at first glance.

Chernobyl: A Time Bomb Buried in the Earth

For all the people on Earth who couldn’t place Ukraine on a map before 2022, the word Chernobyl still resonates. It’s the site of a man-made catastrophe that released 400 times more radioactive material than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

By the way, that was from just 5 percent of the reactor’s core.

The explosion in 1986 rendered a thousand square miles uninhabitable to this day. The infamous “exclusion zone” around Chernobyl remains one of the most contaminated places on the planet, and underneath the protective structure lies a radioactive nightmare: melted reactor fuel mixed with concrete, steel, and sand, forming a deadly…

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Wes O'Donnell
Wes O'Donnell

Written by Wes O'Donnell

US Army & US Air Force Veteran | Global Security Writer | Juris Doctor | Intel Forecaster | TEDx Speaker | Pro Democracy | Pro Human | Hates Authoritarians

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