Russian forces invaded the region from Belarus and took control of the now-defunct Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, according to Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

As of Thursday (Feb. 24), Russian soldiers claimed to have destroyed more than "70 military targets" and 11 airfields as part of a full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine, the largest against a European country since World War II. Russian forces are said to have taken Antonov International Airport on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital.

Since the devastating explosion of Ukraine's Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, huge areas of the Chernobyl exclusion zone have been locked off as one of the most radioactive places on the planet.

Two massive explosions at the facility that year blasted off the reactor's 2,000-ton (1,800-metric-ton) cap, contaminating the surrounding 1,000-square-mile (2,600-square-kilometer) area with radioactive fallout. Humans were later declared uninhabitable in the area for the next 24,000 years.

"It is impossible to say the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is safe after a totally pointless attack by the Russians," Podolyak said, as reported by Reuters. "This is one of the most serious threats in Europe today."

Fighting around the power plant, according to a Ukrainian interior ministry advisor, might result in the disruption of nuclear waste and the spread of deadly radioactive material across Europe.

Between December 2021 and February 2022, over 7,500 more Russian soldiers were stationed in the exclusion zone, which is close to Ukraine's northern border with Russia's ally Belarus and on the most direct route between it and Kyiv.

A pontoon bridge appears to have been erected at the Pripyat River, approximately 14 miles (22.5 kilometers) north of the Chernobyl plant on the Ukrainian-Belorussian border, according to a non-military satellite image posted on Twitter on Tuesday (Feb. 22).

"Russian occupation forces are trying to seize the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Our defenders are giving their lives so that the tragedy of 1986 will not be repeated," Zelenskyy wrote earlier Thursday on Twitter. "This is a declaration of war against the whole of Europe."

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster in Ukraine in April 1986 was caused by a defective Soviet reactor design combined with major blunders made by plant operators. It was a direct outcome of Cold War isolation and the lack of a safety culture that resulted.

The Chernobyl tragedy was a one-of-a-kind occurrence, as it was the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power that resulted in radiation-related fatalities.