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CHERNOBYL TOUR

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TOUR PACKAGE FROM  € 64, $ 71, £ 52

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Personal radiation dosimeters and Geiger counters are two different things. PRD are provided by authorities to measure the radiation exposed to an individual during the tour (they are mandatory and included into the cost). But the data from those dosimeters can be read on a special equipment (there is no gauge or display). While Geiger counters show actual levels of radiation on a digital display in micro sieverts (they are optional and cost $8 per day).

Modern fleet of own minibuses!

For the comfort of our clients we use our modern minibuses mercedes sprinter and vv crafter (they are almost identical) which have been a clear step ahead of its class, especially in terms of safety..

08:00 A.M. MEETING POINT ON THE INDEPENDENCE SQUARE

Itinerary for One Day Chernobyl tour with English speaking Guide .

Read this Important Information you undertake to follow in the zone.

• How to book

Any Questions? How to Book Video Guide .

Our policy regarding the tours to Chernobyl

PRICES & TOURS #howtobook

Discount for hot deal book an eyeopening tour to the control room of the exploded reactor for only us$ 180 (private or multi-day packages)., we managed to generate the lowest rates read more show our competitors price and we will beat it..

* buying two or more seats

• Regular Tour means to join an existing group. Insurance included in the cost . BOOK NOW
• contact us To book Private Maxi Chernobyl Tour (lasts 12 hours), extended - Three, Four or Five-day tour;
• contact us Tour inside the Power Plant - three-four hour tours to the control room of the reactor #2 or #3, or special adventure visit to the control room of the Reactor #4;
• contact us If you are media representatives seeking for an assistance inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone;
• contact us To book a tour that starts from your door step in your country (including air, transfers and accommodation);
• The booking process of our tours is easy. Watch "how to”. If you still have questions please contact our customers support. contact us

• If you need to cancel or postpone a tour you will get a 100% refund or a voucher for your next trip.
• Note! Book now and get a COVID discount.
• Order your insurance with SoloEast Travel and get an online assistance on arrival to Ukraine. Change a date of your tour easily ONLINE.

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• Our features

Things to know when visiting Chernobyl

• Is the tour to Chernobyl safe?
• Audio Guide Apps

How to Book Video Guide

• SoloEast Travel own comfortable and modern air-conditioned minibuses Mercedes Sprinters and Volkswagens depart daily from downtown of Kyiv - Independence Squre. Our guides and drivers speak English. The drivers are instructed to drive our passengers safely - for this every vehicle speed is monitored by GPS system.
• We pay lot of attention to our guides training. Young, knowledgeable and with a great sense of humor, they will answer most of your questions regarding Chernobyl
• Don't worry about cash! We Accept: Credit Cards, PayPal, SEPA wires, e-Transfers. You can also book and pay by calling +38 0994671661 or "drop in" to our OFFICE IN KIEV .

When you decide to visit Chernobyl please consider the following tips that will help you to enjoy the tour. Unfortunately we’ve witness too many disappointment so we simply must share these thoughts with you.

- Book well in advance! We don’t try to trick you when we say that. Booking on a short notice doesn’t work anymore. Give yourself at least a week or better two before the tour to better prepare yourself. - Allow yourself minimum one day of rest in Kiev if you travel from overseas. This will also help if your flight is delayed. - Take it easy on local food and drinks before the tour. Don’t let food poisoning ruined the journey you’ve probably dreamed of for a long time. Alcohol is extremely cheap in Ukraine – but please take it easy on it the day before. And consider other travelers who will be on the bus with you for almost a 12 hours ride. - Beware of pick pocketing in public transportation and on the streets! Loosing your wallet and passport will not just cancel your tour but it will turn your visit into nightmare of getting your travel document from a consulate in Ukraine. Personal radiation dosimeters and Geiger counters are two different things. PRD are provided by authorities to measure the radiation exposed to an individual during the tour (they are mandatory and included into the cost). But the data from those dosimeters can be read on a special equipment (there is no gauge or display). While Geiger counters show actual levels of radiation on a digital display in micro sieverts (they are optional and cost $8 per day). If you have any question you’re welcome to email us or to come to our office in downtown Kiev. Victoria Vilchinska. Director SoloEast Travel.

The tour is 100% safe. You have to follow very simple rules you sign upon entering the Exclusion Zone. The most important things to remember are to watch your steps and follow your guide’s instructions. Please watch this video for the detailed information.

AUDIO GUIDE

If you prefer a guide who speaks your language, you can enjoy our own GPS Chernobyl Tour application. It is available in English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.

Route "Basic"

• Central Control Room (CCR-1) – place of open switchgear control and Plant’s Shift Supervisor workplace.
• Unit Control Room (UCR),where all main technological processes were controlled during Reactor operation.
• Skala. A unique electronic computing machine which appeared in 1973 at the Leningrad NPP and was named "SCALA" - Reactor Monitoring System of Leningrad NPP. Subsequently, it was also installed at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was the central information link, which united most of the control systems of the power unit into a single automated monitoring system for technological process of NPP.
• Unit 3 Main Circulation Pumps (MCP) used for water supply to the Reactor Core.
• Valeriy Khodymchuk Commemorative plaque – in memory of an MCP operator, who died in the performance of his duties, his body was never found.

Route "Basic Plus" – US $180.00 per person , takes place every Monday through Friday (Saturdays and Sundays are days off) and shall be booked at least 14 days in advance. In any case, please double-check the availability before booking the Visit to the ChNPP.

• Central Control Room (CCR-1) is the control room for the open switchgear management and plant’s shift supervisor work place.
• Unit control room (UCR),from which all major technological processes were controlled during the reactor operation.
• Skala. A unique electronic computer appeared in 1973 at the Leningrad NPP and was called "SCALA" - Leningrad NPP Apparatus (Reactor) Control System. Later it was also installed at Chornobyl NPP. It was the central information chain unified most of the power unit control systems into a single automated NPP process control system.
• The central Hall is the power unit reactor hall, the place where technological processes took place.
• Unit 3 Main Circulating Pumps (MCP),which supplied water to the reactor core.
• Valery Khodymchuk Memorial plaque – the memorial to commemorate the MCP operator who died during performance his duties, no body was found.
• Unit 4 Control room (UCR 4) is the premise with partially dismantled Unit control panel equipment at the Unit where the accident occurred.

PICKUP ZONE MAP

Terms and cancellation policy.

• reschedule the tour to another available date;
• have a private or semi-private tour, the cost will depend on the number of people in a group (1 p. - US $300.00; 2 p. - US $162.00 p/p; 3 p. - US $116.00 p/p; 4 p. - US $106.00 p/p);
• cancellation and a full refund.
• Bookings are fully refundable if cancelled earlier than 24 hours before the tour.
• Bookings cancelled less than 24 hours before the tour are non refundable not depending on circumstances and reasons.
• There is no reimbursement for acts of mother nature.

INSTRUCTIONS LETTER

For visitors of the exclusion zone and the zone of absolute (compulsory) resettlement.

When visiting the exclusion zone all foreign and Ukrainian nationals shall be obliged to: Things to know when visiting Chernobyl

• Use clothes & shoes, which maximally protect body, head, hands and feet;
• Comply with the radiation safety rules, health and safety regulations;
• Strictly comply with all instructions of the envoy officer;
• Move around only according to the prescribed routes and by authority of the envoy officer;
• Follow the personal hygienic rules.

During the visit to the exclusion zone it is totally prohibited to:

• Carry any kind of weapons;
• Drink liquors or take drugs;
• Have meal and smoke in the open air;
• Touch any structures or vegetation;
• Sit or place photo and video equipment on the ground;
• Take any items outside the zone;
• Violate dress code (open-type shoes, shorts, skirts);
• Stay in the zone without the officer, responsible for the envoy;
• Gather, use and bring from the exclusion zone and the zone of absolute (mandatory) resettlement vegetable and cattle breeding products (vegetables, fruits, berries, mushrooms, plants, fish etc.), which were cultivated on the area of the exclusion zone and the zone of absolute (mandatory) resettlement, except specimens for scientific purposes;
• Bring in and bring out of the exclusion zone and the zone of absolute (mandatory) resettlement any animals (dogs, cats etc);
• Drink water from wells, rivers and other open water sources. It is allowed to use water only from Chernobyl water supply system, or water from stores.

All instructions of the envoy officer shall be binding for visitors. Photographing and filming on the designated route shall be subject to authorization of the envoy officer. Leaving the exclusion zone and the zone of absolute (mandatory) resettlement it is necessary to:

• Pass the compulsory radiation control of clothes, foot wear, personal items;
• Pass compulsory radiation control of transport.

If contamination exceeds the established control levels, personal clothes, foot wear, and items are subject to decontamination. Possible irradiation dose is up to 3 microSv, which does not exceed the dose limit of population. I have read the above stated rules and confirm that I do not have any medical contraindications.

New in 2022!

Private tour of chernobyl from kiev on luxurious minibus.

Find out more about our rates

SoloEast Travel is licensed and is the 1st TOUR OPERATOR to successfully organize tours to Chernobyl Exclusion Zone since 2000 . We emphasize on training our personal staff with the highest western standards; we have no need to hire transportation, since we have our own fleet of modern, comfortable and air-conditioned minibuses which will make the long journey much more enjoyable and affordable for our customers. SoloEast Travel tour guides alone with the drivers are officially employed by the company, therefore we take all  responsibilities for the service they provide you with. We try our hardest to meet all your expectations so you can feel secure and fully educated after the tour.

Choosing SoloEast Travel you get professional and easy-going team of managers, guides and drivers who will take good care of you on your journey from the beginning to the end making your once-in-a-lifetime experience unforgettable.

COVID-19 INSTRUCTIONS

In order to protect yourself and others from Covid-19 follow recommendations of World Health Organization against spread of COVID-19:

Please, be advised there are extra masks and sanitizers in a bus/car - feel free to use them

Stay SAFE with SoloEast Travel.

How to book video guide (01:41min).

clock This article was published more than  7 years ago

In Ukraine, a radioactive nuclear ghost town near Chernobyl is a hot destination

An earlier version of this article incorrectly cited a Geiger counter reading as 26 sieverts per hour, rather than 26 microsieverts per hour. This version has been updated.

The button that could have started a nuclear holocaust is gray — not red.

I learned this after climbing into a nuclear rocket command silo, 12 floors below ground, and sitting in the same green chair at the same yellow, metal console at which former Soviet officers once presided. Here, they practiced entering secret codes into their gray keyboards, pushing the launch button and turning a key — all within seven seconds — to fire up to 10 ballistic missiles. The officers never knew what day their practice codes might become real, nor did they know their targets.

This base in Pervomaysk, Ukraine — about a four-hour drive from Kiev — once had 86 intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of destroying cities in Europe and the United States. Though the nuclear warheads have been removed, the command silo with much of its equipment, giant trucks that carried the rockets to the base and an empty silo were preserved so that people could see what had been secretly going on at nuclear missile bases in the former Soviet Union. The museum’s collection includes the R-12/SS-4 Sandal missile similar to those involved in the Cuban missile crisis and the RS-20A/SS-18 Satan, the versions of which had several hundred times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

“This is what the tourists come to see,” said Igor Bodnarchuk, a tour guide for Solo East Travel, a Kiev company that specializes in tours of Soviet ruins. “What else do we have to offer?”

Tourists go to Paris to marvel at the majesty of the Eiffel Tower, to Rome to stroll the cobbled streets of the Vatican, to Moscow to behold the magnificent domes of Red Square. And while Ukraine has its own plethora of domed cathedrals, including monasteries with underground caves, thousands of tourists are trekking to this country for a uniquely Soviet experience. Here, they stand outside an exploded nuclear reactor at Chernobyl and rifle through the remains of a nearby abandoned city — Geiger counter in hand. In Chernobyl’s shadow, they marvel at the giant “Moscow Eye,” an anti-ballistic-missile detector that rises 50 stories high and looks like a giant roller coaster.

Every day, a handful of travel companies ferry mostly foreigners to Chernobyl’s 19-mile “exclusion zone.” In 2016, Solo East Travel hauled 7,500 people there, up from only one trip in 2000.

“It used to be sort of extreme travel,” said Sergei Ivanchuk of Solo East Travel. “You were very brave to go to Chernobyl in 2000. Now, not so much.”

Ivanchuk insists that people who go to Chernobyl are not morbid. “They are intelligent people who want to learn something new, and are often interested in nuclear power,” he said.

Likewise, people who venture to the missile base at Pervomaysk are interested in the Cold War. “It’s a place to remember — like the Holocaust — about a dangerous time in history and what it means to have nuclear weapons,” he said.

Earlier this year, Russia deployed a new cruise missile, apparently violating its 1987 arms-control treaty with the United States. In light of that event, the Soviet ruins in Ukraine seem all the more relevant.

The day I visited the former 46th Rocket Division in Pervomaysk, silver engines gleamed in the sunlight as the temperature edged up to 22 degrees. Sticking out of the snow were missiles reminiscent of the one Major T.J. “King” Kong rode like a rodeo cowboy in the movie “Dr. Strangelove.” Nearby was a surface-to-air missile similar to the one that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in July 2014.

The museum tour guides are all former Soviet officers who once worked at the missile base. Ours, Gennadiy Fil’, once manned the nuclear controls. When American tourists dallied, snapping photos of the rockets above ground, he barked: “Ledz go!”

Then he darted through a heavy door of a squat building, down a series of winding stairs and through an underground tunnel, navigating by memory through the narrow, 500-foot-long passageway to the control center in a silo. The narrow cylinder is suspended from the ground — theoretically, to withstand the shock of a counterattack.

In six-hour shifts, Fil’ and another officer would descend in a tiny elevator (maximum capacity: three people) to the bottom of the silo. Stationed at metal consoles in an 11-by-11 control room, they would read secret codes from Moscow that flashed on a computer screen, then quickly tap them into a dingy yellow monitor. Then, they pressed a small, gray button and turned a key on the opposite side of the terminal to launch up to 10 nuclear rockets at once.

“You don’t launch just one missile, because the other side is going to shoot back and destroy you,” explained Elena Smerichevskaya, our Ukrainian interpreter. An intercontinental ballistic rocket fired at New York, she explained, would take about 25 minutes to hit its target.

Fil,’ 55, said he never knew when he would be ordered to input real codes. It was his job, he said and shrugged. He said he had no moral objections to pushing the button. Launching nuclear missiles was a “political decision,” something that people on top of the ground decided, not him.

He admitted that he was scared about the possibility of nuclear war. “You’d have to be crazy in the head not to be scared,” he said.

But just in case Fil’ or a fellow officer (two officers were required to launch a rocket) refused to push their buttons, reserve officers could be called up from a compartment beneath the control center.

For officers like Fil’, there were both mental and physical challenges. The compartments were hermetically sealed, and Fil’ said there was immense pressure on their ears. There were also concerns about the psychological impact of being isolated in the chambers. While the Soviets kept enough food and water on hand for 45 days, some men started to become batty after only two or three days inside the silo bunker, Smerichevskaya said.

While Fil’ is glad the world didn’t implode under his watch, he said he is sad to have lost his job behind the missile controls.

In 1994, three years after Ukraine became independent, it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreed to dismantle its 1,900 Soviet missiles. At the time, Ukraine boasted the world’s third-largest stockpile of nuclear warheads after Russia and the United States. Ukraine shipped its nuclear warheads to Russia and dismantled its silos, often blowing them up or filling them with cement. The control silo at Pervomaysk was the only one spared — so it could become a museum. The 46th Rocket Division, part of the 43rd Rocket Army, was disbanded in 2001.

As a child growing up in the Cold War who was taught to hide under her school desk in case of a nuclear attack, I found it surreal to meet a man who at the same time had his fingers on the triggers of the Soviet Union’s nuclear warheads.

Fil’ shakes his head at how things have changed. “I never thought I’d be standing here talking to an American,” he said, his eyes wide with amazement. “I never thought I’d be having my picture taken. That was absolutely forbidden. And now . . . it’s okay.”

The museum claims that its silos are very similar to those still in operation in Russia. The Satan missile is still part of Russia’s weaponry, although an improved version is set to be operational in 2018. Before Russia invaded Crimea and backed the separatists’ war on Ukraine’s eastern front, Russian soldiers frequently took their families to Pervomaysk to show them what they did at work, museum tour guides say. The missile sites in Russia remain secret.

The city of Pripyat was once a secret Soviet city, closed to anyone but workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and their families. Now the city, an hour-and-a-half drive from Kiev, is a nuclear ghost town. Forty-nine thousand people were forced to evacuate the day after Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 4 exploded on April 26, 1986.

Nearly all the first responders and soldiers died from radiation poisoning while trying to contain the graphite fire and the radioactive particles spewing from the destroyed reactor, explained Bodnarchuk, our tour guide. Officially, only 31 firemen and soldiers were killed. But some believe that the disaster claimed at least 10,000 lives as wind carried radioactive material into Belarus and Northern Europe.

Even though critics have said that the designs of Chernobyl are outmoded and inherently unsafe, Russia reportedly is still using 11 similar nuclear reactors.

Today, visitors can stand across the street from the damaged reactor at Chernobyl, which recently was covered by a huge, $2.3 billion shield. But the highlight of the tour is, by far, the crumbling city of Pripyat. Though tour operators are warned to stay out of Pripyat’s buildings, tourists routinely stomp through the city, including the hospital where dying first responders were taken.

Tourists stick their Geiger counters against tatters of clothing in the hospital lobby and watch their machines shoot up to shockingly high levels — 85 microsieverts per hour. The normal range is .09 to .30 microsieverts per hour, according to the tour company. Most guides carry their own Geiger counters; many tourists come with their own.

Tour operators claim that a visit to Chernobyl is no more dangerous now than a flight from Ukraine to North America. This calculation includes spending 10 minutes in front of the burned-out reactor and no more than two hours in Pripyat.

Solo East Travel has a video that shows how it came up with such math. Those calculations, however, don't factor in hovering over a firefighter's highly radioactive clothing that has been dug up from deep in the hospital. Nor do they specifically include driving through the red forest near the Chernobyl reactor — where the radiation burned up all the trees, which were then bulldozed and buried. Our Geiger counters went crazy as we drove through the new-growth forest, registering 26 microsieverts per hour.

Our guide tried to calm fears about our exposure to radiation by assuring us that any high levels on our body would be detected by the machines we had to pass through on the way out of Chernobyl’s exclusion zone. Those machines — old Soviet steel contraptions that look like retro airport metal detectors — hardly inspire confidence.

To amplify tourists’ shock, guides have embellished some of the Pripyat remains: Amid hundreds of crumbling gas masks spread over the floor of an elementary school, a baby doll has been placed on a chair — wearing a gas mask. A hospital nursery has been outfitted with plastic dolls, placed in cribs with blankets, to make the scene appear even more macabre. Outside a village school building, old toys are scattered about. One-eyed teddy bears and dolls with missing limbs sit on bed springs at a village orphanage. Tables are set with plates and pots.

The most eerie scenes include an abandoned amusement park with its empty, lonely-looking Ferris wheel and bumper cars filled with leaves; a swimming pool with cracked tiles, its deep end filled with trash and an old shopping cart; school hallways cluttered with books; school desks laid out with science experiments; posters of Lenin and other Soviet leaders adorning classroom walls; and a broken baby carriage abandoned in a decaying community center.

Visitors are exhausted by the time their tour bus leaves Pripyat and turns down a one-lane road through a thick forest. Hiding there is the Moscow Eye, also known as the “Russian Woodpecker,” an enormous metal structure silhouetted against the sky like a vertical Stonehenge.

Using over-the-horizon radar, the Moscow Eye was the receiver for a powerful radio broadcast sent from elsewhere in Ukraine. Some said that the signal’s short, repetitive tapping noise sounded like a bird — thus the woodpecker moniker. Others say it sounded more like a machine gun. From 1976, until it went off the air in 1989, the unexplained radio signal interfered with many broadcasts. Listeners speculated that it was a method of Soviet mind control. Only in the past three years have tourists discovered its sublime metal architecture rising from the forest floor near Chernobyl, an anachronistic remnant from a not-so-distant era.

Reed is a writer based in Syracuse. Her website is Cherylreed.net . Find her on Twitter: @JournoReed.

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Chernobyl tour: One- or two-day tours in Chernobyl, spending the night at a new hotel in the exclusion zone. Prices range from $79 for a one-day tour with a group to $349 for a two-day tour with an overnight stay. Tours typically include the Moscow Eye as part of the tour.

Missile Base at Pervomaysk tour: All-day tours with English-speaking drivers and guides range from $75 a person with a group of five or more to $300 for a single person private tour. The museum charges about $8 for admittance that is not included in the tour price.

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Ukraine Travel Advisory

Travel advisory may 22, 2023, ukraine - level 4: do not travel.

Do not travel to Ukraine due to Russia’s war against Ukraine. The Department of State continues to advise that U.S. citizens not travel to Ukraine due to active armed conflict. Read the entire Travel Advisory.

All U.S. citizens should carefully monitor U.S. government notices and local and international media outlets for information about changing security conditions and alerts to shelter in place. Those choosing to remain in Ukraine should exercise caution due to the potential for military attacks, crime, civil unrest, and consult the Department’s latest security alerts.

The security situation in Ukraine remains unpredictable. U.S. citizens in Ukraine should stay vigilant and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness. Know the location of your closest shelter or protected space. In the event of mortar, missile, drone, or rocket fire, follow instructions from local authorities and seek shelter immediately. If you feel your current location is no longer safe, you should carefully assess the potential risks involved in moving to a different location.

There are continued reports of Russian forces and their proxies singling out U.S. citizens in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine for detention, interrogation, or harassment because of their nationality. U.S. citizens have also been singled out when evacuating by land through Russia-occupied territory or to Russia or Belarus.

U.S. citizens seeking emergency assistance should email [email protected] for assistance. Please review what the U.S. government can and cannot do to assist you in a crisis overseas . U.S. citizens may also seek consular services, including requests for repatriation loans, passports, and visa services, at U.S. embassies and consulates in neighboring countries .

On February 24, 2022, the Ukrainian government declared a state of emergency. Each province (oblast) decides on measures to be implemented according to local conditions. Measures could include curfews, restrictions on the freedom of movement, ID verification, and increased security inspections, among other measures. Follow any oblast-specific state of emergency measures.

Many in the international community, including the United States and Ukraine, do not recognize Russia’s purported annexation of Crimea in 2014, nor the September 2022 purported annexation of four other Ukrainian oblasts -- Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. There is extensive Russian Federation military presence in these areas. There are also abuses against foreigners and the local population by the occupation authorities in these regions, particularly against those who are seen as challenging Russia’s occupation.

Although Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine severely restricts the Embassy’s access and ability to provide services in these areas, the Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv continue to remotely provide certain emergency consular services to U.S. citizens in Crimea as well as four other Ukrainian oblasts partially occupied by Russia – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia – to the extent possible given security conditions.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) prohibiting U.S. aviation operations into, out of, within, or over Ukraine. For more information, U.S. citizens should consult the FAA’s Prohibitions, Restrictions, and Notices .

Read the country information page for additional information on travel to Ukraine.

Travel to High-Risk Areas

If you choose to disregard the Travel Advisory and travel to Ukraine, you should consider taking the following steps:

• Visit our website on Travel to High-Risk areas .
• Draft a will and designate appropriate insurance beneficiaries and/or power of attorney.
• Discuss a plan with loved ones regarding care/custody of children, pets, property, belongings, non-liquid assets (collections, artwork, etc.), funeral wishes, etc.
• Share important documents, login information, and points of contact with loved ones so that they can manage your affairs if you are unable to return as planned to the United States.
• Leave DNA samples with your medical provider in case it is necessary for your family to access them.
• Establish your own personal security plan in coordination with your employer or host organization or consider consulting with a professional security organization.
• Develop a communication plan with family and/or your employer or host organization so that they can monitor your safety and location as you travel through high-risk areas. This plan should specify who you would contact first and how they should share the information.
• Enroll your trip in the State Department’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP)  to receive Alerts and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
• Follow the Department of State on Facebook and Twitter .
• Prepare a contingency plan for emergency situations. Review the Traveler’s Checklist .

If you are currently in Ukraine:

• Read the Department’s country information page on Ukraine.
• Familiarize yourself with information on what the U.S. government can and cannot do to assist you in a crisis overseas .
• Have a contingency plan in place that does not rely on U.S. government assistance.
• Monitor local media for breaking events and adjust your contingency plans based on the new information.
• Avoid demonstrations and crowds.
• Ensure travel documents are valid and easily accessible.
• Visit the CDC page for the latest Travel Health Notices related to your travel.
• Get a COVID vaccine to facilitate your travel.
• Understand the COVID testing and vaccine requirements for all countries that you will transit through to your destination.
• Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive Alerts and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
• Review the Country Security Report for Ukraine.
• Review the Traveler’s Checklist.
• Visit our website for Travel to High-Risk areas .

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Putin arrives in Mongolia in first visit to ICC member state since arrest warrant

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Monday in Mongolia , a member of the international court that issued an arrest warrant for him.

The official visit, in which he is to meet Tuesday with Mongolian leader Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court since it issued a warrant for his arrest nearly 18 months ago on charges of war crimes in Ukraine .

Ukraine has called on Mongolia to arrest Putin and hand him over to the court in The Hague. A spokesperson for Putin said last week that the Kremlin isn’t worried about the visit.

Members of the international court are bound to detain suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued, but the court doesn’t have any enforcement mechanism.

Mongolia, a sparsely populated country between Russia and China , is heavily dependent on the former for fuel and electricity and on the latter for investment in its mining industry.

The ICC has accused Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine, where the fighting has raged for 2½ years.

Putin and the Mongolian leader are to attend a ceremony on Tuesday marking the 1939 victory of Soviet and Mongolian troops over the Japanese army that had taken control of Manchuria in northeastern China. Thousands of soldiers died in months of fighting in a dispute over where the border was between Manchuria and Mongolia.

Though Putin has faced international isolation over the invasion of Ukraine, he visited North Korea  and Vietnam in June and has also visited China twice in the past year.

He joined a meeting in Johannesburg by video link last year after the South African government lobbied against him showing up for the BRICS summit, a group that also includes China and other emerging economies. South Africa is an ICC member.

The Associated Press

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Ukraine’s foreign minister kuleba resigns as russian strikes kill 7 people in lviv.

Ukraine’s foreign minister submitted his resignation Wednesday ahead of a major government reshuffle – as a Russian airstrike took out seven people in the latest aerial assault from the Kremlin.

Dmytro Kuleba, 43, one of Kyiv’s most recognizable faces in the international stage, stepped down from his position just a day after four other Cabinet ministers handed in their resignation in the biggest government reshuffle since the war began.

Kuleba, who has served as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s most valuable advocate since the Russian invasion, did not state a reason for his departure.

In July, Kubela became the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to visit China amid the war to ask Beijing’s help to push Russia toward a cease-fire.

It remains unclear who will replace him as the Kremlin continues its steady advance in Ukraine.

Several Ukrainian outlets, citing unmanned sources, suggested Kubela’s deputy, Andril Sybiha, would take up the role as Kyiv’s chief diplomat to accompany Zelensky on his latest trip to the UN next week.

Zelensky had indicated last week that a major reshuffle of his administration was imminent as the war nears its 1,000-day mark. The Ukrainian president said Wednesday that his country needed “new energy, and that includes in diplomacy.”

Davyd Arakhamiia, a leader of Zelensky’s party in the Ukrainian parliament, said more than half the current Cabinet will undergo changes, with the new appointments expected to be announced on Thursday.

The government shakeup comes as a major Russian strike hit the city of Lviv on Wednesday, a western area far from the front-lines and near the border with NATO member Poland.

The strike killed at least seven people and injured another 52, according to Ukraine’s Rescue Service. The attack was carried out with a Kinzhal missile and drones, which targeted Kyiv’s defense industry, the Kremlin said.

Liv Mayor Andrii Sadovyi disputed the claim as he shared photos to the press of a mother and three daughters who were killed when their home was struck in the attack.

The European Youth Forum, a platform of the continent’s youth organizations, confirmed the death of the oldest daughter, Yaryna, 21.

“We will neither forget nor forgive” the attack, her colleagues said in a Facebook post.

During his last official duties as Ukraine’s foreign minister, Kuleba said Wednesday’s attack demonstrated yet again the need for the West to support his nation.

“To put an end to this terror, Ukraine’s partners must promptly deliver the promised air defense systems and ammunition, as well as strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities and allow us to launch long-range strikes on all legitimate military targets in Russia,” he wrote on X.

Wednesday’s attack took place just a day after two ballistic missiles destroyed a military academy and a nearby hospital in eastern-central Ukraine, killing 53 people and leaving nearly 300 others injured, Ukrainian officials said.

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