Near Mstsislaw, Preparation of a Site for a Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility May Have Already Begun

To verify all three sites, 'Flagstock' used the Sentinel satellite imagery service and compared how the announced construction sites and their surroundings have changed over the past year.

Khoyniki district (Pripyat basin). The site near the village of Novoselki underwent the fewest changes over the year. During this period, four squares with a total area of 12 hectares were cut out in the forest. Only one of them pertained to the suspected construction area of the RWDF. The clearings look like normal forestry activities.

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Astravets district (Viliya basin). The site also underwent changes. Directly on the potential construction area, a 4-hectare square of forest was cut down; to the west, outside the construction area, earthworks or a storage site covering 1 hectare are noticeable. The territory is located near an existing temporary sand storage site. The available images do not allow for a conclusion about the nature of the work.

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Mstsislaw district (Sozh basin). Shows the most changes. The first works began as early as September 2025, becoming most noticeable in early summer 2026. The latest satellite imagery updates show that work is ongoing.

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On the territory being considered for RWDF construction, a kilometer-long stream gully was cleared of vegetation and filled in. The area to the north was completely cleared of vegetation and, likely, of the fertile topsoil over an area of 3.4 square kilometers. In the area to the northwest, vegetation removal and, likely, partial leveling of suffosion sinkholes (pits) have been carried out.

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Studying the geology makes it possible to understand what exactly is visible in the satellite images. These are unprecedented earth leveling works in terms of scale. Gullies formed by streams and numerous local suffosion sinkholes are being filled with sand.

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It is impossible to explain such large-scale and expensive earthworks over an area of more than three square kilometers by the needs of agriculture and the so-called inclusion of unused lands into circulation. No example of such works on 'suffosion' lands could be found. Corresponding state procurements were not carried out in the Mstsislaw district.

A 'Flagstock' correspondent managed to reach the chairman of the Khodasy village council by phone and, posing as a concerned citizen, inquired about what was being built near the village of Khodasy. The response was a hung-up phone call.

Another hint pointing towards the Mstsislaw site was the close correspondence between the proposed designation of the RWDF construction area and the published object scheme. The construction area for the disposal facility, as per the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report, is 0.38 square kilometers and is a rectangle with a chamfered corner. In the schemes, the 'Mstsislaw' site occupies 0.56 sq. km, while the 'Astravets' site occupies 0.90 sq. km, and the 'Khoyniki' site occupies 4.02 sq. km.

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An explanation for the colossal capital investments could be that the territory has already been prepared for a year for the construction of the RWDF. Meanwhile, the other two sites in the Khoyniki and Astravets districts are fictitious and not seriously considered, and public discussions and environmental expert assessments have become mere formal rituals.

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