Ukraine is today marking the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and commemorative events are expected to take place at the site of this former Soviet-era nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend a ceremony to be held at the station. Due to Russia’s ongoing 2022 invasion and the proximity of Chernobyl to Belarus, a close ally of Moscow, strict security measures have been taken.
In Kiev and other cities, events are being planned to honor the victims of the 1986 disaster, which occurred in 1986, including observing minutes of silence, exhibitions, concerts, film screenings and wreath-laying ceremonies.
Commemoration ceremonies are also expected to take place in Belarus, Russia and other former Soviet republics. Hundreds of thousands of workers from across the Soviet Union were deployed at Chernobyl at the time in an effort to contain radioactive contamination.
On April 26, 1986, a test at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the then-Soviet Republic of Ukraine went out of control. Reactor number four suffered a catastrophic failure, releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere.
Radioactive clouds spread across parts of northern and western Europe. Belarus and western Russia were most affected. The damaged reactor had been releasing radioactivity for months.
Experts estimate tens of thousands of deaths related to the disaster. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the 30-kilometer exclusion zone created around the nuclear power plant, which is now offline.
