Ukraine is marking the anniversary of Chernobyl amid fears that history is being repeated because of Russia’s war
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Ukraine marked the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster on Sunday, amid fears that Russia’s four-year-old war could trigger a repeat of the world’s worst nuclear disaster that left thousands dead and devastating environmental effects.
Marking the disaster – which sent radioactive material across Europe as Soviet authorities sought to conceal its true extent – has taken on a sharp new meaning as Russia attacks its smallest neighbour.
Kyiv says Moscow has repeatedly sent missiles and drones on airstrips near the center to attack Ukrainian cities, even damaging critical defenses in attacks last year.
Russian forces have also taken over Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the southeast, which the Kyiv government’s nuclear power plant said on Sunday had been temporarily shut down since the Kremlin’s military took power in March 2022.
On Sunday, foreign officials including the EU energy commissioner arrived in Kyiv to celebrate the anniversary and pledge new support for Ukraine’s energy system, which is regularly targeted by Russian strikes.
Sad events took place in Kyiv and at the Chernobyl plant itself – which was temporarily used in the first weeks of the war – where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy placed a candle next to the visiting Moldovan president and other officials.
“Currently, the risk is very high because of what Russia is doing with our Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, and in general with our energy and our land,” Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv.
War damage
A Russian drone strike in February 2025 punctured a large arc installed in part of the Chornobyl plant in 2016 to protect a sarcophagus built in 1986 to cover tons of radioactive waste. No leaks were found, and crews sealed the hole.
But the arc needs at least 500 million euros worth of extensive repairs to prevent permanent damage, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is helping to fund the project.
Speaking in Kyiv on Sunday, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said that repairs should start as soon as possible.
A surveillance video shared by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on social media shows the strike on the outer shell of the nuclear plant.
The chief prosecutor of Kyiv region told Reuters that Ukrainian radars had detected at least 92 Russian drones flying within five kilometers of the shield since June 2024.
Nuclear power has become the backbone of Ukraine’s energy system since Russia’s full-scale invasion, accounting for about 70 percent of total electricity generation, according to state-owned company Energoatom.
Control of the Zaporizhzhia facility, the largest in Europe, is one of the main points of contention in US-led peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow that have produced few results.
Long lasting results
Millions were exposed to radiation, hundreds of thousands were forced to flee, and vast areas of the world were contaminated after an accidental explosion and meltdown of the fourth reactor at the Soviet-built Chornobyl facility on the morning of April 26, 1986.
Thousands have since succumbed to radiation-related illnesses such as cancer, although the exact death toll and long-term health effects remain hotly debated.
Pope Leo on Sunday said the Chornobyl disaster left a mark on the conscience of humanity as a whole, and urged that atomic energy “always be used to support life and peace.”
Serhii Balashov, one of those who worked in the clean-up, told Reuters that the Soviet authorities wanted to hide the consequences of the accident even among those who played a key role in keeping it afloat.
“They didn’t even acknowledge the connection between our illnesses and being in Chornobyl to be cleaned,” he said on the sidelines of a memorial event in Kyiv.
About 100 kilometers north of Kyiv and surrounded by a 2,600-sq-km unincorporated area, the plant – visited by Reuters on Wednesday – is now shrouded in an eerie silence.
National Guardsmen are guarding the facility, where about 2,250 workers are working multi-day shifts in anticipation of its gradual withdrawal. The plant’s last reactor was shut down in 2000.
The control room of the fourth reactor is now a dark space of cluttered and rusted Soviet-era equipment.
Moose and wild horses roam the area around the plant and the nearby abandoned town of Prypiat, a sign of how nature has taken over in the absence of humans.
