Inside abandoned football stadium in heart of Chernobyl with forest growing on pitch years after devastating disaster
THE AVANHARD STADIUM, once a 5,000-seater football venue, was abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
The ground was the home of Soviet club FC Stroitel Pripyat - a fourth tier side formed in the 1970s.
They won the Kyiv Oblast Football Championship three years in a row between 1981 and 1983.
But on April 26, 1986, an historic nightmare swept the entire city in the north of Ukraine - the same day FC Stroitel Pripyat were preparing for a cup semi-final against FC Borodyanka.
The meltdown and explosion of a reactor at a nuclear power plant occurred near the cities of Pripyat and Chernobyl and around 100 kilometres north of Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
The origin of the blast took place around an 11-minute drive from the Avanhard Stadium.
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And everyone within an 18-mile radius of the plant was forced to relocate.
This was due to the nuclear explosion leaving behind uninhabitable levels of radiation.
FC Stroitel Pripyat did not play for the remainder of 1986, before they changed their name to FC Stroitel Slavutych the following year and eventually dissolved in 1988.
Yet despite the apocalyptic environment left in the wake of the disaster, parts of the club's original stadium remain standing to this day.
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However, the structure has been largely swallowed up by trees and forest.
From a bird's-eye view, it is difficult to even locate the ground given the greenery that has engulfed the area.
But several images show there are segments of the stands very much in tact.
Steps leading to the pitch - which is now covered in trees - are still there, with lots of benches bolted to the structure.
The entrance to the stadium also remains relatively untouched.
But it is still a world away from being a usable football venue.
And, due to the radiation, the area is unlivable for around 150 years, so there will not be any repairs taking place in the near-future.