samosely

thumb|right|250px|Two samosely in 2007 Samosely (; ; , ) are residents of the 30-kilometer Chernobyl Exclusion Zone surrounding the most heavily contaminated areas near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Belarus and Ukraine. In Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian the semosel is a generic reference to these who settle without an official approval or permission.

==Overview== The zone contains a number of abandoned towns and villages whose current population is made up of people who either refused to evacuate the area or secretly resettled in the relatively unprotected region after it was cordoned off. The majority of the samosely are elderly people who made their home in the area prior to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, although some are disaffected settlers from outside the region. When the population was evacuated, they were initially told they could return in a few days, and many faced discrimination in areas of government resettlement. Originally there were 1,200 people who returned into the area in 1986 after evacuation. As of 2007, there were 314 samosely remaining (out of the 100,000 previous inhabitants of the area that have been evacuated), according to the last official samosely census. In 2017, there were only 135 samosely left. Most are concentrated in the town of Chernobyl itself, with about half the population dispersed in 11 other villages throughout the zone. The average age of the samosely is 63. The main reason for the decline of the samosely population is their advanced age.