Ukraine Recalls 35th Anniversary Of Chernobyl Blast Amid Misery and Hope

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

(Worthy News) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was due Monday to visit the Chernobyl exclusion zone to remember the 35th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident. His address to Ukrainians came as the tragedy is still being felt among suffering survivors who once lived in the area, where rare species have taken over.

“Hello, is this the militarized fire station,” a worker asks in footage released online. “What is burning there on your site?” “There’s an explosion in the main building between the 3rd and 4th unit,” a man answered. “Alarm the personnel.”

On April 26th, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion would soon impact the world. But it took authorities of what was then the Soviet Union 35 long hours before they ordered locals to evacuate.

Among them was then Chernobyl worker Anna Shynkarenko, a married mother of three. “We started to leave Prypyat town and saw the police. The officers were waving at us to go faster. There was a long line of buses in front of us with residents of Prypyat,” she recalled in an interview.

“I felt sick in the car, but what could I do? There were three little kids in the back seat.” She added that they were uprooted and never returned. Shynkarenko and her family still suffer from radiation sickness.

SOME HOPE

Yet amid the misery, there is some hope around what was the Chernobyl plant. Endangered wild horses are among the animals flourishing in the 30-kilometers (18 miles) Chernobyl exclusion zone. Thirty of the breed Przewalski’s horse were released here in 1998 as part of preservation efforts. Now some 150 roam the area, 110 kilometers (68 miles) north of Kyiv.

Denys Vyshnevsky heads the research department for Chernobyl Radiation and Environmental Biosphere Reserve. “The Chernobyl accident is indeed the largest accident at a civilian nuclear facility,” he said.

“At the same time, due to its scale, it is a window of opportunity. Both for unique radioecological research like nowhere else in the world and the conservation of biological diversity. It is a paradox.”

It is a small sign that life continues after the disaster in which so many people perished.

The deaths of some 30 people were directly linked to the explosion at the fourth reactor of Chernobyl. Still, thousands more are believed to have died in the years following radiation poisoning across Ukraine and neighboring Belarus and Russia.

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