Chernobyl: a grim metaphor for Ukraine's relations with Russia

It was good to read Charles Bremner’s account of how he and Reuters colleagues covered the first days of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the north of then Soviet Ukraine. It was a hazardous mission with high radioactive readings ringing alarm bells in monitoring stations across the world.

These days, given Russia’s war in Ukraine, most writers refer to the infamous plant as Chornobyl, conforming with the transliteration in Ukrainian, while reserving the Russian name for the disaster itself. It is a point that underscores the feelings of most Ukrainians today: the Chernobyl catastrophe is a calamitous legacy left by an exploitative colonial power with consequences for generations to come.

The explosion at reactor No. 4 in the early hours of April 26 resulted from human error by the operators, compounded by a Soviet obsession with military secrecy. The result was catastrophic: a power surge caused a massive explosion that blew the top off the reactor, spewing out radioactive debris and starting a fire that raged for three days.

The chaotic evacuation of the 50,000 population of the main town, Prypiat, and thousands of others in outlying villages left an uninhabited Exclusion Zone of 1,000 square miles, the size of Luxembourg, along the border with Belarus. Most experts say the majority of the vast region of swamps and pine forests will not be habitable in any real sense for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years.

Fast forward to wartime Ukraine and the Chornobyl plant remains a grim metaphor for its relations with Russia.  At the onset of the invasion in February 2022, Russian forces seized control of the plant and occupied it for five weeks before withdrawing as Moscow abandoned its offensive on Kyiv. Then in February 2025 a drone, which Ukraine says was clearly fired from Russia, damaged the protective covering of a new safe containment shelter over reactor No. 4.

When, as then Reuters chief correspondent in Kyiv, I came to writing a 25-years-after piece I was able to draw on the childhood memories of Alexey Yermakov, a computer engineer who was part of Reuters technical support team in Kyiv. As a 12-year-old in Prypiat at the time, he recalled being handed iodine tablets to suck at school to prevent possible thyroid cancer caused by radiation exposure. He and his family had heard the explosion at the plant during the night.

"Dad told us to close all the windows and put rags soaked in vinegar around the door. We sat at home all that day, watching the helicopters overhead," Alexey told me at the time. He was evacuated the next day with his mother and brother.

On a visit to Prypiat in 2011 with Sergiy Karazy of Reuters TV and Reuters photographer Gleb Garanich I was overwhelmed by the surreal and sad nature of the place. Those evacuated at the time were told they would be back in their homes within three days – but were never able to come back as highly radioactive debris and dust settled on the lands and rivers around.

Once a modern, start-up Soviet city, Prypiat is now a ghost town steadily being engulfed by vegetation; plants and trees grow incongruously through floors and ceilings in housing blocks. Apartments have long since been stripped of household goods, furniture and fittings by gangs of looters and scrap metal dealers. Wolves and wild lynx are said to roam the stairwells of abandoned blocks.

Over the years, there has been a steady flow of organised tourism to the site, to Prypiat and to those parts of the Exclusion Zone judged to be safe. It has been a magnet too for thrill-seekers and “dark” tourists who enter illegally and, defying all the dangers, take their chances living rough in abandoned homes and drinking from the rivers.

All that ended with the Russian invasion. The region is now a militarised area under the control of the Ukrainian army. A new international effort is underway to find cash to fix the damaged safe containment shelter.    

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