Ukrainians met on Saturday to celebrate the victims of the biggest nuclear disaster in history and the crew of cleaning at a ceremony held in Pliyat, a north town.
Prypyat, now a ghost town, previously provided the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
The event, commemorating the 39th anniversary of the 1986 catastrophe, was attended by plant employees, victim colleagues, survivors, their relatives and government officials.
Participants lay flowers on a memorial dedicated to the “liquidator” – in other terms, civilians and military personnel asked to deal with the outcome – observed the silence.
At the ceremony, the distinction between state awards and honors was presented to liquidators of the Chernobyl disaster and those involved in responding to the aftermath of the Russian UAV strike on February 14, 2025.
As the Kiev Regional State Regime recalled, Russian forces seized the Chernobyl Zone early in the full-scale invasion. The Ukrainian forces liberated the area in the spring of 2022, but the nuclear threat has not disappeared.
Russian soldiers occupied the “exclusion zone” around the Chernobyl plant for over five weeks, possibly suffering from radiation poisoning.
During the rally, Ukrainian Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Svitrana Grinchuk expressed his gratitude to those who remained in the plants during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Today, I would like to use this opportunity to thank those who stayed at work on February 24, 2022. Despite the fact that despite the dangers there was a direct threat to their lives and health, they have ensured the operation of plants and businesses not only in Ukraine but also in order to maintain radiation safety for the entire European continent.
Official figures show that the immediate effects of radiation following the 1986 disaster killed 31 people, and nearly 8.4 million people in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were exposed to radiation.
The results are still impossible to assess, but we know that a huge radioactive cloud has gradually reached almost every corner of the Earth. Today, around 30km around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant remains an exclusion zone.
Video Editor Lucy gave
