"I will go to Chernobyl tomorrow," the Russian president said on Monday during an award ceremony in the Kremlin for participants in the clean up operation of the 1986 disaster.

The area around the Chernobyl plant, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, remains highly contaminated from an explosion at the plant's reactor number four a quarter of a century ago.

Vast areas, mainly in the three then-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, were contaminated by the fallout from the major nuclear meltdown and some 200,000 people were relocated.

Over the last 16 years, Ukraine has tried to raise funds to build a new shelter over the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl to make the area environmentally safe. The total amount needed to implement the entire project is approximately $2.2 billion. About half of this has been raised so far.