> It is weird to me that these organisations exist at all,
> especially these rather strange sounding windows of opertunity to visit.
Well, as I said, responsibilities within these organisations change rapidly.
And with these changes, people change as well. Some are more liberal,
some are more strict, others are simply more corrupt. Some like the guy
who is filing the application for admittance, some don't.
And it's always some kind of tightrope walk. I can't go into details here
but simply imagine that people have to trade a few Euros of bribe
against possibly losing their work...
> Are these organisations there to maintiain security on different areas,
> and then sometimes try to make so money on the side?
Both. Most objects in the Zone which are not considered to be absolutely
worthless are under control of these folks. COMPLEX is one of the biggest
and, IIRC, it is state-controlled. They have/had their hands on Ch-II, the
blocks 5/6 (including the remnants of the reactor construction site),
Buriyakivka (if you wan't you can translate it's sign shown below), ...
AFAIK, blocks 5/6 are under different control now.
I think that a lot of fishy stuff's going on there. In 2010, they disassembled
some remainders of reactor 5. All tubes were in the process of being
sandblasted (it was Sunday and people were working). After having taken
the photo below, some angry looking guy came which could only be appeased
buy showing him the paper singned by Mr. COMPLEX again and again.
3 days later, we found the lorry carrying the tubes being examined by the
police at the roundabout close to Iwankiv...
Another Sunday we were back in the machine hall of reactor 5. 2 people
were burning tons of cables in order to remove the isolation and extracting
the copper (you can't imagine that sickening smell). We almost had to
swear that we won't take any photos (that's were I started to change my
memory card every 10 minutes

).
> I guess it is the ukraine, it doesnt need to make any sense!
You're getting the idea quickly!