'ginger-colour forest') is the ten-square-kilometre (4 sq mi) area surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant within the Exclusion Zone, located in Polesia.

The name "Red Forest" comes from the ginger-brown colour of the pine trees after they died following the absorption of high levels of ionizing radiation as a consequence of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on 26 April 1986.

[2] The Red Forest is located in the zone of alienation; this area received the highest doses of radiation from the Chernobyl disaster and the resulting clouds of smoke and dust, heavily polluted with radioactive contamination.

4 reactor contaminated the soil, water and atmosphere with radioactive material equivalent to that of 20 times the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the 1996 BBC Horizon documentary "Inside Chernobyl's Sarcophagus", birds are seen flying in and out of large holes in the structure of the former nuclear reactor.

The long-term impact of the fallout on the flora and fauna of the region is not fully known, as plants and animals have significantly different and varying radiologic tolerance.

[15] On 31 March 2022, it was reported that most of the Russian troops occupying Chernobyl were forced to pull back after suffering from radiation sickness caused by digging trenches in the heavily contaminated Red Forest.

[16][17] There has not been independent confirmation that the pull-back was caused by radiation sickness,[18][19] but Ukrainian officials have provided access to the site which shows considerable trenches and digging in the Red Forest.

[20][19] On 1 April 2022, The Daily Telegraph reported that one Russian soldier died from acute radiation sickness after being camped in the Red Forest for a prolonged time.

[22] The 2004 novel Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith, in the series featuring the Russian police inspector Arkady Renko, is partly set in the Red Forest near Chernobyl.