An arch insulates what is left of Chornobyl’s No. 4 nuclear reactor, which exploded on April 26, 1986, during a system test that went out of control. The disaster is remembered as a key point in the final decline of the USSR, which led to the independence of Ukraine and other Soviet territories.
When Russian soldiers entered Chornobyl’s exclusion zone, 85-year-old Valentyna Kukharenko, one of the few residents who lives here, wrote a message on a piece of paper and stuck it to her window for the invaders to see.
She wrote that she lost her childhood to the Second World War, her motherhood to Chornobyl’s nuclear disaster, and her elderly years to Russia’s occupation.
“As soon as we found out that they attacked our Chornobyl, I wrote this,” she said, sitting at her kitchen table. “I thought that maybe one of them would come up and respect how they act,” she added, but as far as she knows, no one read it.
Valentyna Kukharenko, 85, is among the Chornobyl-area residents who returned after the nuclear disaster was contained.
On the first day of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops poured over the border from Belarus into Chornobyl, occupying the nuclear power plant and the largely abandoned exclusion zone until they withdrew from the area at the end of March, 2022.
While there, the troops dug trenches in the Red Forest, the most contaminated land around Chornobyl, ransacked the power plant, looted buildings, and even pocketed radioactive material, according to locals.
Before Russian forces retreated from Chornobyl, Ukrainian officials feared the soldiers might disturb radioactive dust, or cause damage to the containment facilities, potentially leading to another disaster.
Later this month, Ukraine will mark the 38th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident, which Soviet officials infamously tried to cover up.
On April 26, 1986, the explosion of reactor No. 4 killed workers on site, as well as firemen and emergency workers who died of acute radiation sickness in the months after the catastrophe.
In the ensuing years, there have been nearly 2,000 documented cases of thyroid cancer in children who were 14 or younger at the time of the explosion. And according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, residents also suffered widespread psychological trauma, resulting in alcohol abuse and suicide.
The entire population of nearby Pripyat – approximately 49,000 residents – was evacuated, and later thousands of others in the area were ordered to leave their homes.
Pripyat, once home to about 49,000 people, was days away from the grand opening of this amusement park when the nearby nuclear plant exploded in 1986.
Soon after, the 30-kilometre exclusion zone was set up around the plant, and that contaminated area is still largely abandoned. Some decommissioned plant workers stay in nearby dormitories and continue to work shifts at radioactive waste facilities.
But a few residents, who are mostly in their 80s and 90s, couldn’t fathom staying away from their homes all those years ago, and returned.
Ms. Kukharenko and her husband were among those who came back. She said her husband was sitting high up inside a crane cabin at the time of the disaster, and saw the light coming from the reactor.
Later, when his throat and nose were sore, some people joked that it was because he didn’t drink vodka. However, when radiation specialists checked on him, they found that a large amount of radionuclides had accumulated near his thyroid gland. He didn’t seek further treatment, and died in 2008 from what Ms. Kukharenko believes was a heart attack.
“We just lived our lives and didn’t think about anything,” she said. She’s also not worried about what she eats from her garden, saying she grows a little bit of everything: tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions, dill and parsley.
“We just wanted to live in Chornobyl. We never thought about the consequences.”
The Chornobyl exclusion zone is now home to hundreds of wild horses, but like all the animals that feed on this land, they are at constant risk of radiation exposure.
Before the full-scale invasion, Ms. Kukharenko was often visited by tourists eager to know about life in Chornobyl’s exclusion zone. She liked telling them about her favourite hobby – fishing – and dismissed any notion that what she caught could be contaminated. “As you see, I’m alive,” she says.
Since the war began in 2022, tourists have been prevented from visiting Chornobyl, so the visitors who stop by Ms. Kukharenko’s home are mostly journalists. Now she has another horrible story to tell.
Though she says she wasn’t fearful of Russian troops because she believed God would protect her, their presence made things uncomfortable.
Ms. Kukharenko said snipers were positioned on a building beside her home and had a clear view of her trips to the toilet in her yard. “I moved so slowly, they could easily target me,” she said.
She was more concerned about her daughter, who is retired and lives in Dnipro, and her son, who works at the local ecological centre on two-week rotations. When he’s not working, he lives in Sumy region near the border with Russia.
And she fretted over what Russian troops were up to at the power plant. “I worried a lot about the employees and about the whole world,” she said.
Radiation signs warn people not to enter the Red Forest, where Russian troops built fortifications when they occupied this area.
While Russian troops patrolled Chornobyl’s nearly empty streets, others dug defensive trenches in the Red Forest – which got its name after pine needles were turned rust-coloured from radiation – seemingly stole anything they could get their hands on, and frightened power plant employees. People who live and work there, as well as Ukrainian officials, said they could not make sense of their behaviour at all.
In an interview in Kyiv, Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said Russian troops stole everything, including forks – and he said they behaved like barbarians from ancient centuries.
“It’s really craziness how they behaved at Chornobyl, and we know there were some representatives from Rosatom at Chornobyl,” he said, referring to the staff of Russian’s state nuclear agency. “I really do not know what they were doing there.”
While Russian forces captured the non-operational Chornobyl plant in northern Ukraine, they also seized the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest, in the southeastern part of the country, and continue to occupy it. Ukrainian officials have demanded it be returned to Ukrainian control and have accused Russia of occupying Ukrainian nuclear plants to blackmail Ukraine and its Western allies.
Liudmyla Kozak remembers the moment Russian troops arrived at the Chornobyl plant, where work continued non-stop under the occupation.
Liudmyla Kozak, an engineer who oversees security at Chornobyl, saw Russian troops on security surveillance the moment they invaded, and watched them as they approached in tanks and destroyed fences.
Not long after they arrived, the troops brought members of Ukraine’s national guard to a bomb shelter underground where they were held captive. Plant employees were followed around by soldiers with automatic machine guns and forced to work non-stop.
Ms. Kozak said employees of Rosatom knew everything about the plant, but it was a different situation with Russian soldiers.
Initially, she said, Russian soldiers who first occupied the plant were familiar with Chornobyl and the facility, but as time went on, more troops arrived who knew nothing about it, and were unaware of lingering radiation, or how it could affect them.
Through the same security camera where she first saw Russian troops appear, Ms. Kozak said she saw what she believed were soldiers exhibiting symptoms of radiation sickness being taken away to Belarus. Ms. Kozak said she also heard a military leader mislead the soldiers who remained about why their comrades had fallen ill, telling them the sick soldiers had eaten radioactive deer meat.
Oleksandr Cherepanov remembers the Russian occupiers making strange decisions about what to take or destroy.
Some power plant workers, though fearful themselves, tried to spook the Russian soldiers. Oleksandr Cherepanov, who is responsible for processing nuclear waste at the power plant, said he recalls one young Russian member being teased that if he touches something radioactive, he will become impotent.
He also remembers the Russian soldiers’ unusual behaviour, saying they destroyed locks on cabinets, and even picked up radioactive sources in locked boxes meant for testing radiation levels.
Mr. Cherepanov said he wasn’t afraid while he was doing his job, but he was scared in the evenings when the cafeteria would be teeming with drunk Russian soldiers carrying automatic guns. Eventually he stopped going there.
Chornobyl residents Yevgen and Halyna Markevych remember many of the Russian occupiers being young and unsure of themselves.
The elderly couple say the Russians largely let them be after they put up a 'people live here' sign on their property.
Valentyna Kukharenko’s neighbours, Yevgen Markevych, 86, and his wife Halyna Markevych, 82, live next door in what was originally Mr. Markevych’s grandfather’s home.
When Russian troops arrived, they told the couple to put a sign on the fence outside their home that reads, “People live here.” The soldiers walked around with guns, Ms. Markevych says, and she remembers the snipers nearby, but they were largely left alone.
“These men, they were so young, they told us they wanted to go back to Russia, to their mothers,” Ms. Markevych said.
Mr. Markevych said one day, several armed vehicles stopped outside his home, and soldiers asked him for directions to Belarus. “I think they were lost,” he said. “And I don’t know about their future.”
With reports from Kateryna Hatsenko
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