Chernobyl vodka a ‘strange propaganda exercise’, says victims’ charity


Madeleine Ross
Fri, 24 November 2023 

The Chernobyl Spirit Company produces apple schnapps and vodka from fruit and grain grown in the so-called ‘Zone Two’ - HO/AFP/Getty Images

Vodka produced in the abandoned zone at Chernobyl has been labelled a “propaganda exercise” by a victims’ charity.

The Chernobyl Spirit Company, a social enterprise which creates apple schnapps and vodka from fruit and grain grown in the so-called “Zone Two”, sells the drinks to tourists and in the UK. It launched pear and plum versions of its schnapps in 2022.

While previous scientific inquiries have found that the liquor does not contain radiation, the drinks have faced criticism from victims’ charities for making light of the risk of radiation poisoning.


Linda Walker, executive director at the Chernobyl Children’s Project, which works with people who have disabilities caused by the accident, said the spirit production was “inappropriate”.

She pointed out victims of the disaster are still suffering long-term health effects from the fallout of the 1986 disaster.

Ms Walker said: “It’s just such a bizarre thing to do. It’s so easy to grow apples, apples are grown everywhere, absolutely all over the place in Belarus and Ukraine.

“To choose to grow them in the area heavily contaminated by Chernobyl, it’s to make a point,” adding: “It’s a very strange propaganda exercise.”

Following the explosion in 1986, a 36-mile wide exclusion zone was created around the site’s radioactive core - Petr Shelomovskiy

Ms Walker said health problems continue in the region, especially in areas where people were hunting and eating contaminated foods.

She explained: “Especially where people were either hunting and eating wild boar and rabbits, or people were eating the food from the contaminated area.

“That’s continued to cause all sorts of health problems in both children and adults.”

It comes after some 1,500 bottles of the apple schnapps were seized by prosecutors in Ukraine in 2021, and were only released after a thorough investigation.

It is thought the bottles were taken as a result of confusion over whether the right tax had been paid on the spirits.

The company’s vodka was launched in 2019 and the drinks are made by the Palinochka Distillery in Ukraine before being shipped to the UK.

The profits from the alcohol are put back into communities who were impacted by the 1986 nuclear disaster.

Chernobyl Spirit’s 2022 accounts reveal that it made a profit of more than £10,000, after making a donation of £15,000 to the Ukrainian war effort.

Portsmouth University’s Professor Jim Smith started the social enterprise in 2019 - Getty Images/AFP

Professor Jim Smith, of Portsmouth University, who started the social enterprise in 2019, said scientific evidence suggests the levels of radiation in mammals and fish in the area were not higher than in similar places nearby.

He said: “You could grow apples safely and eat them, in many areas in this semi-abandoned area. You could grow all sorts of crops safely. The farmers know the crops, they know the kind of fertilisation they need to make crops which are below the Ukrainian limit and well below the EU and UK limits.”

The professor added the Narodychi District, where the crops are grown, is contaminated to a “very low level”, and “no more contaminated than Cornwall with natural radiation”.

He added that the area was suffering from very low investment, meaning there was a poor level of healthcare and a lack of jobs for the population that remains.

Following the explosion in 1986, the Soviet Union created a 36-mile wide exclusion zone around the radioactive core.

A new concrete sarcophagus was placed over the site in 2016, reducing the remaining radiation in the nearby area, but the authorities have struggled to decide what to do with the abandoned land.

Ukraine is planning to build one of Europe’s largest wind farms in the exclusion zone, powering 800,000 homes in and around Kyiv.

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