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By seizing the plant as part of a brutal invasion, Russia is stirring up radioactive particles, and also Chernobyl’s painful legacy: Ukrainians’ memory of the Soviet Union’s disregard for their lives. The disaster at Chernobyl became a rallying cry for Ukrainian independence in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and processing its traumatic effects on the country’s people and environment became an important facet of Ukrainian national identity. This violent encounter between “Chernobyl invaders” and Chernobyl survivors is its own act of aggression.

Read our ongoing coverage of the Russian invasion in Ukraine “Any provocation by the Chernobyl invaders … could turn into another world environmental catastrophe.” Russian control of the site “is one of the most appalling threats to Europe today,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said in a statement last week. I interviewed scores of cleanup workers in the ’90s for my book Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl, and learned just how deeply the memory of the explosion is carved into Ukraine. Whatever the Russian army’s reasoning, the implication for Ukrainians is clear: the potential for a repeat of the disaster, which they have spent three decades and considerable resources trying to prevent. Or maybe, as Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed, the military wanted to protect the plant’s infrastructure, preventing any staging of a “nuclear provocation.” Or maybe, as a Russian security source told Reuters, it was a warning to NATO. Maybe Russian forces overtook the facility for the sake of convenience-after all, it’s along the route from Russian ally Belarus to Kyiv, ​​the Ukrainian capital, which is now under assault. Since the infamous 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, which sent nuclear materials as high as five miles into the atmosphere and likely condemned far more people than the United Nations’ projected long-term death toll of 4,000, the plant has been radioactive.

The Russian military’s capture of the Chernobyl nuclear facility in northern Ukraine last week led to heightened levels of both radioactivity and confusion.