
A Ukrainian expert has put an end to speculation about a video showing a blue dog wandering in the contaminated area of ??the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, in northern Ukraine.
"This is absurd," Serhiy Kireev told reporters in Chernobyl.
Kireev, who heads the state-owned company responsible for monitoring the area, Ecocenter, confirmed that "there are no blue dogs in northern Ukraine."
"The dogs have been sterilized to curb their reproduction. The blue color indicates which animals have undergone the procedure," he explained.
"The paint is harmless to these dogs," Kireev said.

Images of several blue dogs had been widely circulated in the international media, fueling speculation about the effects of radioactive contamination of the area.
The explosion of a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union in April 1986 is considered the most serious disaster in the history of the civilian use of nuclear energy.