By AFP
April 25, 2026
Nikolay Solovyov points to photograph depicting him in the control room in the nineties - Copyright Iranian Foreign Ministry/AFP -
Romain COLAS
Nikolay Solovyov was on shift the night of April 26, 1986 when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Instead of fleeing, he chose to fight his “first war” against radiation.
Four decades later, a second war — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — has taken his son.
Solovyov, 67, a hard rock fan, still wears his hair long, though it has turned grey.
On the night of the world’s worst nuclear accident, he was working as a turbine mechanic in unit number two, a few hundred metres from reactor number four, which exploded during a safety test.
“It felt like an earthquake. I didn’t hear the explosion — the turbines were still running, with a very loud noise,” he recalled, his voice quiet and gentle.
The alarms went off. As he rushed towards the exploded reactor, he saw one colleague badly irradiated and vomiting, another being carried out on a stretcher. The third one was slumped in his chair, head in his arms. All of them died soon after.
Only then did the full extent of the disaster become clear. Through the massive hole ripped open by the explosion, he could see “the sky.” In the corridors, torrents of water poured from broken pipes.
Firefighters quickly began hosing down the smoking reactor — “they didn’t let the fire spread,” Solovyov said. Almost all those firefighters later died from radiation exposure.
At dawn, he and his colleagues discussed how long they had left to live. “We’ll last two weeks,” said one of them.
After hearing this, Solovyov, who quit smoking five months earlier, lit up a cigarette. “Well, if I’m going to die, at least I’ll die young and handsome,” he recounted his thought in the moment.
– Seeking praise –
His night shift ended in the morning. The day team took over and the bus drove him back to Pripyat, the workers’ town three kilometres (two miles) from the plant.
It was all quiet and business as usual, except for the roaring trucks that were spraying foamy “detergent” on the pavement. Once home, he told his wife to seal the windows.
For days, Soviet authorities hid the catastrophe from the world — a disaster that further weakened the already crumbling USSR, which collapsed in 1991.
Solovyov stayed at the plant throughout the “liquidation” — a massive clean-up operation in the aftermath. He later helped build the first sarcophagus covering the reactor, as well as the second one, which was damaged by a Russian drone strike in 2025.
The plant continued producing electricity until 2000 and teams still work there to ensure its safety.
Among the reasons for his decision to stay, Solovyov lists good pay, “generous holidays” and an “interesting” nature of work.
The man, who later became an engineer, believes that the “dangerous” 1986 test was pushed ahead by the plant managers for the sake of winning praise from Soviet leadership.
Hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the massive liquidation operation, which saw hundreds of thousands more evacuated from neighbouring settlements. “Only the USSR” had the resources to carry out such an effort, Solovyov believes.
Dozens of his acquaintances later died of cancer. Of the 22 men on his night shift, only four are still alive.
A 2005 UN report put the number of confirmed and projected deaths at 4,000 in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Greenpeace in 2006 estimated that the disaster had caused close to 100,000 deaths.
– ‘The other war’ –
Solovyov, who received high doses of radiation and has undergone countless medical checks, attributes his longevity to good health, regular sport, a calm temperament and genetics.
“I have to thank God and my parents for giving me good genes,” he said.
He now lives in a country house near Slavutych, a town 120 kilometres (70 miles) north of Kyiv, built in 1986 to house people displaced by the disaster.
In the local Chernobyl museum, wreckage from downed Russian drones is displayed in the main hall. “That’s the other war,” Solovyov said quietly.
Standing on the windswept central square of Slavutych, he said that his first, “nuclear” war was against an invisible, odourless poison.
“When people here say ‘before the war’ or ‘after the war,’ they mean April 26, 1986,” he said. “And now, as people put it, this is already the second war of our generation.”
On the night of February 23-24, 2022, Solovyov set out for the plant as usual. But he never reached it: the two bridges leading there had been destroyed. Russian forces seized Chernobyl and occupied the site for a month.
His youngest son joined the Ukrainian army. In September 2023 he was reported missing in action.
Devastated, Solovyov could no longer find the strength to work and took early retirement.
Chernobyl refugee town welcomes Ukraine’s conflict displaced
By AFP
Slavutych was created to house people who lost their homes in the Chernobyl disaster, now it has become home as well for those displaced by Russia's invasion - Copyright AFP Genya SAVILOV
Romain COLAS
Slavutych was built as a Soviet paradise for refugees from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster but now it is being born again as a haven for people escaping Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
With is massive theatre, stadium, schools, hospital and rows of identical concrete apartment blocks, Slavutych was the perfect example of the Soviet Union’s ideal of “friendship of the peoples”.
After the Chernobyl reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, workers and architects from the eight Soviet republics — Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Russia — took part in the construction carried out at breakneck speed.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia had to leave their homes as Chernobyl’s radiation spread across Europe after the world’s worst nuclear accident.
The population of the town of Prypyat, the town near the Chernobyl reactor where most of its workers lived, was mainly sent to Slavutych.
“All the residents aged over 39 are internally displaced,” Slavutych mayor Yurii Fomichev told AFP.
But the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the final closure of Chernobyl in 2000 saw many of Slavutych residents lose their job, and hope. Most decided it was best to leave.
– Soviet welcome –
Now there are only about 20,000 people in a town designed to take 50,000. Some buildings in Slavutych were left to abandon, until Russia decided to invade in 2022.
Some 1,265 of the population moved to the town in northern Ukraine because of the war, according to Mykola Kalachnyk, the administration head of the Kyiv region that includes Slavutych. That, however, is just a fraction of the 3.7 million people that the United Nations says has been displaced by the Russian onslaught.
Russian forces even occupied Slavutych for a few days in March 2022 but left when Kyiv’s forces ousted them.
“Here the people have been through so much and they understand us,” said Olga, a 50-year-old who lives in the town with her elderly, handicapped mother.
Four years ago, Olga, who only gave her first name, was forced to flee the town of Enegodar that was home for workers of another Ukrainian nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia. The Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s biggest civilian nuclear power complex, remains in Russian hands.
Olga and her mother spent 18 months living with another family in the town of Zaporizhzhia before arriving in Slavutych in 2024. She has been given a brand new apartment.
According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR representative in Ukraine, Bernadette Castel-Hollingsworth, every family in Ukraine has been “touched” in some way by the displacement of the war.
A children’s nursery and part of a hospital have been renovated, with help from the government and the United Nations, and turned into apartments for the displaced.
Kateryna Romanenko, 40, left the devastated city of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, just before it was captured by the Russians in 2023.
Romanenko is delighted by her Slavutych home which she called her “most positive” experience of the past four years. She pays no rent, just for power and services.
But Olena Tolstova, 74, said she is feeling the pain of the war turmoil.
“I want to go home,” said the retired pharmacist, who pines for her apartment in Energodar and small country dacha house in the countryside.
Tolstova, a widow, is living in hospital dormitory in Slavutych, after spending several months at the home of a friend who had worked at Chernobyl.
Despite wanting to leave Slavutych, she acknowledged that she had been helped under the Soviet principle of “friendship of the people”.
By AFP
April 26, 2026
Slavutych was created to house people who lost their homes in the Chernobyl disaster, now it has become home as well for those displaced by Russia's invasion - Copyright AFP Genya SAVILOV
Romain COLAS
Slavutych was built as a Soviet paradise for refugees from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster but now it is being born again as a haven for people escaping Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
With is massive theatre, stadium, schools, hospital and rows of identical concrete apartment blocks, Slavutych was the perfect example of the Soviet Union’s ideal of “friendship of the peoples”.
After the Chernobyl reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, workers and architects from the eight Soviet republics — Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Russia — took part in the construction carried out at breakneck speed.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia had to leave their homes as Chernobyl’s radiation spread across Europe after the world’s worst nuclear accident.
The population of the town of Prypyat, the town near the Chernobyl reactor where most of its workers lived, was mainly sent to Slavutych.
“All the residents aged over 39 are internally displaced,” Slavutych mayor Yurii Fomichev told AFP.
But the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the final closure of Chernobyl in 2000 saw many of Slavutych residents lose their job, and hope. Most decided it was best to leave.
– Soviet welcome –
Now there are only about 20,000 people in a town designed to take 50,000. Some buildings in Slavutych were left to abandon, until Russia decided to invade in 2022.
Some 1,265 of the population moved to the town in northern Ukraine because of the war, according to Mykola Kalachnyk, the administration head of the Kyiv region that includes Slavutych. That, however, is just a fraction of the 3.7 million people that the United Nations says has been displaced by the Russian onslaught.
Russian forces even occupied Slavutych for a few days in March 2022 but left when Kyiv’s forces ousted them.
“Here the people have been through so much and they understand us,” said Olga, a 50-year-old who lives in the town with her elderly, handicapped mother.
Four years ago, Olga, who only gave her first name, was forced to flee the town of Enegodar that was home for workers of another Ukrainian nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia. The Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s biggest civilian nuclear power complex, remains in Russian hands.
Olga and her mother spent 18 months living with another family in the town of Zaporizhzhia before arriving in Slavutych in 2024. She has been given a brand new apartment.
According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR representative in Ukraine, Bernadette Castel-Hollingsworth, every family in Ukraine has been “touched” in some way by the displacement of the war.
A children’s nursery and part of a hospital have been renovated, with help from the government and the United Nations, and turned into apartments for the displaced.
Kateryna Romanenko, 40, left the devastated city of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, just before it was captured by the Russians in 2023.
Romanenko is delighted by her Slavutych home which she called her “most positive” experience of the past four years. She pays no rent, just for power and services.
But Olena Tolstova, 74, said she is feeling the pain of the war turmoil.
“I want to go home,” said the retired pharmacist, who pines for her apartment in Energodar and small country dacha house in the countryside.
Tolstova, a widow, is living in hospital dormitory in Slavutych, after spending several months at the home of a friend who had worked at Chernobyl.
Despite wanting to leave Slavutych, she acknowledged that she had been helped under the Soviet principle of “friendship of the people”.
No comments:
Post a Comment