On April 26, 1986 Chernobyl experienced a complete meltdown before exploding, spilling radiation onto its surrounding landscape. Chernobyl, a Soviet nuclear power plant in Northern Ukraine, was undergoing routine tests and maintenance when the workers noticed something was wrong: steam production and pressure was too high. By the time the operator moved to shut down the reactor, it was too late. This caused the plant to explode, immediately killing two workers, and release radioactive materials into the surrounding environment.
In the following weeks after the accident, 28 people died of acute radiation syndrome. It caused over 350,000 people to evacuate threatened areas in order to avoid the large radiation cloud that drifted over Eastern Europe. As of 2022 there was no major public health crisis attributed to the event, and although the major and long-term impacts are not known it is estimated that the area will be habitable by the end of the twenty-first century. Due to the lack of data available and collected from the Soviet Union immediately after the event the deaths of wildlife is unknown but estimated to be great.
The Chernobyl site saw little action until the events of the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War in which Russian troops took over and occupied the site for a little over a month before returning it back to Ukraine. It is not completely known why the Russians took the power plant, but it is most likely it was to disconnect the plant from the Ukrainian power grid, which did occur for a little over two weeks. Other than the Russian movements causing a slight increase in radiation, due to disturbing the topsoil, the occupation was not significant nor actively threatening the environment.