Ukraine leader says Kiev needs more Chernobyl funds

Thousands of metric tons of toxic nuclear dust billowed across Ukraine, Russia and Belarus in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986.

Ukraine has already received hundreds of millions of dollars in Western help to build a new shelter over the reactor and to construct facilities to process nuclear waste.

But Yanukovich told the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Thomas Mirow that the former Soviet republic needed hundreds of millions more.

"We have seen now that the funds we expected to spend are not enough. Additional needs could total about 400 million euro," Yanukovich told Mirow.

In April United States agreed to give Ukraine $250 million for work to safeguard the Chernobyl site.

A concrete and steel structure was hurriedly erected after the disaster, which contaminated vast tracts of land with radioactivity.

Thousands of people are believed to have died from the effects of radiation since the accident and research continues into the long-term health effects, particularly the incidence of thyroid cancer.

(Writing by Pavel Polityuk; editing by Richard Balmforth)