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[Animal Rights] The guards caring for Chernobyl's abandoned dogs

The descendants of pets abandoned by those fleeing the Chernobyl disaster are now striking up a curious relationship with humans charged with guarding the contaminated area. It wasn't long after he arrived in the irradiated landscape of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that Bogdan realized his new job came with some unexpected companions. From his first days as a checkpoint guard in Chernobyl, he has shared the place with a pack of dogs. Bogdan (not his real name) is now in his second year of working in the zone and has got to know the dogs well. Some have names, some don't. Some stay nearby, others remain detached – they come and go as they please. Bogdan and the other guards feed them, offer them shelter, and occasionally give them medical care. They bury them when they die. All the dogs are, in a sense, refugees of the 1986 disaster in which Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. In the aftermath, tens of thousands of people were evacuated from the Ukrainia