Diary of Resilience/ Mridula Ghosh/ KYIV
Forty years ago, on April 26, 1986, it was a weekend in Kyiv, sometimes sunny, sometimes rainy. An evening fest had been planned at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. We, the international students, rushed to attend, but for no clear reason it was cancelled. The first real shock came around 1am, when my friend from Bulgaria relayed what the BBC had reported: there had been a nuclear accident near Kyiv.
The Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden had detected abnormally high levels of airborne radiation drifting from the direction of the USSR. At night, when signal jamming was weaker, foreign students would often listen to the BBC and VOA under the pretext of improving our English. We scarcely grasped the scale of the disaster. Our thoughts drifted through the windows into the dark streets, where chestnut trees swayed quietly.
A KGB report noted that by 8am on April 28, radiation levels at units 3 and 4 were 1,000–2,600 microroentgen per second, while in parts of the city they ranged from 30 to 160. The then party chief of Ukraine, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, scribbled his now-famous note: “What does this mean?” It was a telling sign that even senior officials did not fully understand the danger. From the next day, we saw bright yellow Hungarian-made Ikarus buses, filled with children, leaving the city under militia escort.
People spoke in whispers, fearful of saying too much. It took two full days for the Soviet authorities to acknowledge the accident publicly. A brief statement was aired on the 9 o’clock evening news programme Vremya on April 28, assuring viewers there was no cause for panic. The first advice on protecting oneself from radiation exposure appeared only on May 9 in Pravda Ukrainy, urging people to avoid dust. The general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, addressed the nation as late as May 14.
Evacuation, however, had begun after 36 hours. The city of Prypyat was emptied in haste on April 27, with residents told to take only essential belongings and assured they would return within days. To this day, Prypyat remains a ghost city.
My first interaction with the Indian ambassador at the time, Nurul Hassan, came when the diplomatic corps from Moscow were brought to Kyiv to demonstrate that everything was under control. My father, an experienced radiologist, advised me to avoid consuming potatoes, milk and mushrooms from nearby areas. I followed that advice until the late 1990s. Although glasnost and perestroika were under way, data and fallout maps remained classified.
The Chornobyl plant continued to operate. A new city, Slavutich, was built at a safer distance for workers, funded by contributions from Soviet republics and international partners. Japanese and Finnish workers were among those who assisted. We foreign students even visited the site while it was under construction.
In the years following the accident, environmental and national-democratic movements gained momentum across Ukraine and Europe. On April 26, 1988, the first unauthorised demonstration took place in Kyiv, with slogans such as “Away with NPPs from Ukraine”, “For a nuclear-free Ukraine” and “We don’t want dead zones”. Across many regions, people protested against the construction of new nuclear plants and the continued operation of old ones. Civil society organisations such as “Green World” and the “Chornobyl Union” emerged, eventually evolving into political forces. The European Green movement gained traction, particularly in Germany. While the fall of the Berlin Wall is often credited with reshaping the world, Chornobyl arguably had a deeper impact on the Soviet Union’s collapse. Serhii Plokhy, in his book on Chornobyl, writes about how people lost trust in the authorities.
A decade later, during the 10th anniversary of the accident, I was working with the UN and accompanied under-secretaries-general on a visit to Chornobyl. We planted trees, as agreements had been finalised to close the plant. We were also among the first to enter Prypyat after it was reopened to Ukrainians and journalists. Travelling through the exclusion zone, we saw elderly residents who had returned to their villages despite official warnings, a surreal scene reflecting multiple layers of reality and expectation.
Years later, during the early days of the Russian invasion and occupation of the Chornobyl plant in February 2022, the region once again became a source of fear. At the time, I spoke with Leila, a journalist born and raised in Prypyat. She described recurring dreams. In one, she was an adult studying medicine at university, visiting her parents on weekends. The plant still stood, Prypyat was alive, and there had been no explosion. Her father worked at reactor 4, her mother in the plant canteen. Her home on Sportivna Street was filled with the comforting aroma of food. It felt vivid and real. Then, suddenly, her father called: “The war has begun.” She replied, “What war, dad? And you have not been with us for 18 years.” Then she awoke. For Ukrainians, the greatest nightmare today is this war and the persistent threat from nuclear Russia. She added, “And this comes after we gave up the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world.”
On February 14, 2025, a Russian drone strike damaged the New Safe Confinement structure at Chornobyl. A 15-metre hole is now visible, and Ukraine faces a critical four-year window to repair it before the protective shield fails completely. Furthermore, the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in southeast Ukraine, the largest in Europe and the tenth largest in the world, has been under Russian occupation since March 2022, with heavy fighting occasionally taking place in the vicinity. With nuclear ambitions in countries such as Iran and ongoing conflicts worldwide, the level of risk continues to rise.
There have been other disasters, including Fukushima, yet the profound social impact of Chornobyl is often overlooked. Two broader truths emerge. It is no longer possible for Russia to conceal its war losses or sustain false narratives about its invasion and economic condition. Equally, Europe and the wider world can no longer ignore Ukraine’s overall and nuclear security. Ukraine has demonstrated remarkable resilience and innovation in warfare. Ensuring its total security is fundamental to the stability of Europe and the world.
The author, formerly with the UN, is a professor of international relations in Kyiv.
Anatomy of a disaster
Chornobyl, earlier spelt Chernobyl, is about 135km from Kyiv. At 1:25am on April 26, 1986, a chemical (not nuclear) blast at the fourth reactor of the nuclear power plant resulted in the outflow of 11 tonnes of nuclear fuel into the air, along with Caesium-137, Strontium-90 and other radioactive elements; its force was 400 times that of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The impact was felt to varying degrees in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and across Europe. The fourth reactor was put into operation in 1984; it was the newest. At the time of the accident, 160 people were on site, with 300 more in the adjacent offices. Overall, 6,00,000 liquidators (those who managed the immediate aftermath) helped in the clean-up operation and, by various estimates, 5,00,000 people lost their lives. Almost 8.5 million people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia received significant doses of radiation. A total of 90,784 people were evacuated in Ukraine by the end of the summer of 1986. As many as 2,293 Ukrainian cities and towns, with a population of approximately 2.6 million, were contaminated.
In 1991, a major fire broke out at the second reactor, resulting in its shutdown. In December 1995, a memorandum was signed between Ukraine, the G7 countries and the European Commission to prepare a programme for the complete closure of the plant. Finally, on December 15, 2000, the Chornobyl plant was completely shut down. In September 2010, the foundation for a new sarcophagus was laid over the destroyed fourth reactor. In October 2011, construction of the Centralised Storage Facility for Spent Ionising Radiation Sources began at the Vector complex site, and in April 2012, construction of an arch to cover the “Shelter” began; it was completed on November 29, 2016.
On February 24, 2022, Russian forces seized the Chornobyl plant, held the staff hostage and dug in, receiving significant doses of radiation. Only on March 31 did Russian troops leave the territory, looting equipment worth $100 million and kidnapping many members of the National Guard, holding them hostage in Russia.
On February 14, 2025, a Russian attack drone of the Shahed (Geran-2) type hit the shelter of the fourth reactor, causing considerable damage.