Three Ukrainian citizens who run the “URBANIKS” blog have been arrested in Japan for illegally entering an abandoned house in the Fukushima exclusion zone while livestreaming, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported.
Police detained 34-year-old Anatoliy Dybak, 29-year-old Vladislav Savinov, and 43-year-old Oleksandr Kryukov on 24 September in the town of Okuma near the site of the 2011 nuclear disaster. The trio operates YouTube and Telegram channels featuring explorations of abandoned locations.
Kryukov, known for his “Kreosan” YouTube channel with over 5 million subscribers, previously lived in the Russian-occupied part of Luhansk Oblast and later moved to Russia. His channel features electrical experiments, survival tips, and unauthorized visits to exclusion zones, including Chernobyl. Two others may also be from occupied Luhansk Oblast.
“When everything is over – you will see really cool content from the Fukushima exclusion zone. The last planned episode from this trip has been officially filmed. I am satisfied with the material, although I planned to shoot completely differently,” the bloggers wrote before their arrest. “There was sweat, tears, and radioactive green spiders the size of my face.”
The detention followed an anonymous tip to Futaba police on the evening of 23 September. “A video is being broadcast on YouTube where foreigners enter a house,” the caller reported, according to police statements.
Officers tracked the location through the video footage and discovered the three men inside the abandoned building. “Around 7:30 am on September 24, [the suspects] broke into an abandoned house in Okuma town, for which they are suspected of trespassing,” police stated.
All three suspects have admitted guilt, according to investigators. The abandoned house sits within a restricted zone where entry remains severely limited following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident caused by Tokyo Electric Power Company.
The 2011 Fukushima disaster ranks as the most severe nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. A magnitude 9.0-9.1 earthquake – the strongest recorded in Japan – triggered massive tsunamis that destroyed the plant’s cooling systems. The resulting explosions caused reactor core meltdowns in three units, with contaminated water flowing into the ocean for years.
The natural disasters killed approximately 18,500 people across 20 Japanese prefectures, injured over 6,000, and left 2,500 missing. The tsunamis flooded roughly 560 square kilometers of coastline, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Japanese authorities evacuated residents within a 20-kilometer radius of the plant. The government officially shut down the facility in December 2013, though cleanup operations continue. Permanent residence remains banned in areas with the highest radiation levels.