Fires rage near Chernobyl after Russia allegedly destroys radiation monitoring lab

Firefighters are battling wildfires near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant as Ukraine claims Russian forces have destroyed a nearby laboratory that was used to monitor radioactive waste.

More than 30 fires across about 33 square miles in Chernobyl's exclusion zone have been spotted in satellite images, Ukraine's Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources wrote on Telegram.

Chernobyl, Ukraine, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster, fell to invading Russians last month.

The fires come the same day as reports emerged that Russian troops are seizing radioactive waste monitoring equipment at the facility.

CNN reported that Ukrainian officials said "samples of radionuclides -- unstable atoms that can emit high levels of radiation -- had been removed from the lab" as well.

"Every day we receive new information about the atrocities of orcs in the exclusion zone - they rob everything they see. Even ordinary electric kettles are taken away," Ukraine's environmental agency wrote on Telegram, as translated by Google.

The government said it hoped Russia would use the looted radionuclides to "harm itself, and not the civilized world," CNN reported.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed the fires around Chernobyl in an announcement Wednesday. 

Ukraine's nuclear regulator "said slight increases in caesium air concentrations had been detected in Kyiv and at two NPP sites west of Chornobyl, but the regulator told the IAEA that they did not pose significant radiological concerns," the IAEA wrote, adding that it will continue "to engage with the regulator to obtain further information about the fire situation."

Numerous safety concerns have been raised about the nuclear plant since Russians took control. Staff were finally rotated out of the facility on Monday after remaining at the plant since February, when Russian forces seized the facility.