Belarus did right to rehabilitate the territories affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, president Alyaksandr Lukashenka told journalists on 26 April, the day of the 30th anniversary of the tragedy.
“People were scared. I understood, however, that that was our land and we needed to revive it. We can see the results today. We did right to rehabilitate these lands,” Lukashenka said.
According to him, dozens of billions of U.S. dollars have been injected in the rehabilitation of the contaminated territories over the years.
“We have done a lot and took the right decision. Within the ongoing five-year period, despite all problems and difficulties, we will tackle all the issues in the south part of our country and will help it forget about the tragedy,” state-run news agency BelTA quotes Lukashenka as saying.
In his opinion, such work should have been started before the Soviet Union collapsed. “The time, however, was lost. Some 10-15 years were spent in debates. But still, we have done a lot,” the Belarusian leader said.
It should be noted that after the Associated Press reporters passed on a bottled sample of milk from a dairy farm of Belarusian Nikolai Chubenok which is located on the edge of Belarus’ Chernobyl exclusion zone to a laboratory that confirmed the sample contained levels of a radioactive isotope at levels 10 times higher than the nation’s food safety limits, Alyaksandr Lukashenka had better be more cautious in expressing overoptimism.
Belsat.eu, following BelTA
