35-year-old Stanislav Polessky and his wife Victoria from Kyiv decided on an interesting experiment: they settled and began renovations in one of the abandoned houses near the Chernobyl zone. The spouses regularly share their impressions and unexpected finds with the audience into YouTube.

Stanislav says that he works in the IT field, and in his free time loves to wander through abandoned buildings, dungeons and roofs, as well as go to extreme tours. Focus asked him about this extraordinary experience.

Why did you settle in Chernobyl

— To be honest, this is an artistic act. My wife and I often traveled there to relax, and now we decided to experiment and have begun repairs in an abandoned house. This is the last village in front of the alienation zone - there are a lot of no one needs.

You live there constantly?

- No, the maximum was a week.

How the alienation zone has changed in recent years?

- Until a full -scale invasion, I regularly went there, starting since 2010. Houses are destroyed because there is no departure - everything rots, leaks and freezes. The streets are overgrown with bushes and trees, but wild nature has come to life: we often see wild boars, foxes, deer and Przewalski's horses. They say there are bears too. I remember when I went on my first hike, I was very afraid of being attacked by wolves - I even took an ultrasonic repeller for protection.. Fortunately, I only saw them a few times and then from afar.

Sometimes people talk about mutants and monsters. Noticed something like that?

- Not once, but on the network there is a video shot by employees of the alienation zone in the village of Kopachi, which is four kilometers from the reactor. There they saw some completely bald creature-something between a dog and a wolf. Most likely this is a sick dog. Also, people often talk about abnormal soms that live in the channel around the station. These monsters grew to two meters in length, because no one caught them. It seems to tourists that these are mutants.

Someone checked how contaminated they are with radiation?

- Of course, very much. This type of fish lives at the bottom, in the mud, and that’s where the radiation settles.

And in what condition the plants are now?

— The influence of radiation can only be seen on pines and fir trees near the “red forest”. They are twisted and grow very strangely - twigs down.

What discoveries in the Chernobyl zone surprised you most

- Actually a lot of things. Personal belongings of people, furniture, children's construction sets, books, postcards and photo albums. Once stumbled upon a pack of Soviet rubles. But you can’t take anything out of there, because it’s a crime..

What's the story with the abandoned body in the morgue

- There is a legend that after the explosion at the nuclear station in the local morgue did not manage to bury the body of the homeless. It seems that the liquidators were buried somewhere there. How true is this story, no one knows.

I saw on social networks that you recently found a bag of puppies in a planting..

— My wife and I heard a strange sound. We thought that wolves were howling near the village. Went to intelligence and saw this bag. One of the locals threw the puppies near the landfill-tied it in a knot, without food and water. There are five girls and one boy. Temporarily took the kids to their cottage, but we are looking for new owners. Who can pick it up, please write on Instagram.

By the way, what about self-settlers How many are left

-About 100 people. Previously, in the zone itself there were up to 10 villages, where people lived, and now these are only three settlements: Chernobyl himself, dome and Teremsya. Local residents are mostly elderly. I know only one young man who settled in his parents' house.

How do they live there

— Once every five weeks a car with food came to them. I don't know how it is now. Of the benefits of civilization there is only light, but there is no gas. It is interesting that the dump trucks do not particularly complain about radiation. Those who left there, according to them, had previously died. There is such a paradox.

How harmful it is to go to Chernobyl?

- We always take a dosimeter with us. One of the most polluted places with free access is a red forest near the fourth reactor. The wind was blowing exactly there in the first days after the accident. All the trees changed color after receiving a colossal dose of radiation. Some of them liquidators buried. The rest, supposedly, is in normal condition. If you go without a dosimeter, it seems that this is an ordinary forest. However, as already said, some twigs grow atypically - and this is the only mutation officially confirmed by scientists.

Where else does the dosimeter go off the way?

— Mainly near equipment burial grounds. One of them, “Rassokha,” which was located three kilometers from the zone’s fence, has now been liquidated. There at one time it was possible to see helicopters, military equipment, trucks, fire engines and even motorcycles. Pollution is actually not critical, but 50-100 times higher than normal. It is also very dangerous in the basement of the Pripyat medical unit, where firefighters are stored, which extinguished the reactor. I went there twice, but I wish I hadn't.. God forbid you will inhale radioactive particles, then everything can be - even lung cancer. I know that in Buryakovka there is a lot of scrap metal, in particular the yellow robot Joker, which worked on the roof of the reactor - it was also shown in the HBO series " Many dangerous locations are not indicated anywhere. One day Vika and I decided to take a break. When we approached the destroyed fence, the dosimeter simply began to explode.

Don't be afraid of the consequences?

— If you follow safety rules, nothing bad will happen. I’ll tell you even more - thanks to such multi -kilometer campaigns, my health has only improved, because it has now become worse from a sedentary lifestyle now.

What happens if you get caught?

- So they caught it. They drew up a report and then had to pay a fine. I think 340 hryvnia.

I heard that there were many foreign tourists before the full -scale war.

- Yes, especially after the release of the series. I myself worked as a guide and drove them. It happened that up to 1,500 people stopped at one day on the weekend. Foreigners are very into this. They said that they returned from there as different people. When they see a tragedy of such magnitude, they rethink their lives.

You go and understand that it is a big city where no one lives, everything froze in this Soviet era - at home, streets, signs, banners, as if you are in the time machine.

We will remind, earlier Focus wrote that the British resort Bournmouth in the 1960s was one of the most popular centers for relaxation. However, recently, this fabulous location has noticeably losing ground. Travelers complain that investments do not come to the city, and the service sector has not been noticeably worsened and the "