Russia's mind-bogglingly stupid move in their war against Ukraine

On the first days of Russia's full-scale invasion attempt of Ukraine, they occupied the city of Chernobyl. Yes, exactly that Chernobyl.

The logic behind this beggars belief. It's a mind-bogglingly stupid move.

It shouldn't be any surprise to anybody that the Pripyat area, including Chernobyl, has no military value. There are no military bases there, or is there anything of military strategic value in the area, for rather obvious reasons. It is, for all intents and purposes, a radioactive toxic wasteland with zero value. The land has no value, and there is no military value to the area either.

What makes the invasion of Chernobyl particularly stupid is that the soil, especially in the so-called Red Forest, is still radioactive, and driving tanks on it disturbs the soil and releases huge radioactive dust clouds.

(Yes, tourists visited Chernobyl all the time prior to the invasion, but these visits were extremely controlled, and one of the strict rules for any visitor is to not drop anything on the ground, and if they do, not to pick it up. They are also limited to only certain sections of the city.)

What's worse, according to reports they even started doing some preliminary construction work, digging up trenches. On radioactive soil. 

And, indeed, this was not without its consequences. Several press articles were published about Russian soldiers being hospitalized for radiation sickness (probably primarily from inhaling the radioactive dust kicked up by the tanks.)

Even if the idea is that they would threaten to destroy the Chernobyl reactor 4 containment shield, that wouldn't really be received very well by the international community. Plus, even if they did want to do that, they could do it perfectly well without driving tanks into the area. 

Eventually the Russians just left the area. Maybe they finally noticed that there's literally zero strategic value to the area, and that it's just braindead stupid to go there and inhale radioactive dust clouds.

This might go down in history as one of the stupidest military decisions of all time.