The glittering gold medal that her late husband Viktor was received for working inside the Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone is tightly held by Anastasiya Rudenko.
She believes that the radiation may have contributed to her husband’s bladder cancer, which ultimately led to his death in 2014. Now, she weeps over his passing in the Ukrainian town of Vyschetarasivka, which is located on the other side of the river from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Both Moscow and Kiev have accused the other of shelling within a close proximity to the ability. Screens warn of a “grave” tragedy with the potential for catastrophic fallout after rockets have hit a storage facility for radioactive waste.
Rudenko works in a village located along a stretch of the Dnipro River that is approximately 14 kilometres long and 9 miles long. From this village, she is able to see the looming silhouette of the nuclear power station, which provides evidence of her companion’s role in the world’s worst nuclear accident in history.
The 63-year-old man said in an interview with AFP, “We might end up in the same situation as the people of Chernobyl.”
“There is no positive aspect to what is taking place, and we do not know how it will come to an end.”
The nuclear tragedy that occurred at Chernobyl in 1986, when a reactor from the Soviet period exploded and sent radiation into the atmosphere inside the northern region of Ukraine, has left Ukraine with significant psychological wounds.
Russia took control of the site as it began its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, which sparked widespread concerns about the country’s safety. However, the position was abandoned within a few weeks when Moscow failed to conquer Kyiv.
In addition, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy facility, which is located in southern Ukraine, was taken in the early stages of the war; nevertheless, it has remained in Russian hands ever since that time.
Ukraine claims that hostile forces are launching attacks from the greatest fortress in Europe, but that its own army is unable to respond to the attacks with fire of its own.
Those individuals who have close connections to Chernobyl are hearing ominous echoes from the past as the situation worsens.
Viktor, Anastasiya’s husband, was one of the 600,000 people known as “liquidators,” who were entrusted with methodically decontaminating the “Chernobyl exclusion zone.” This zone was the location where high radiation levels forced civilian evacuations.
The official death toll from the Chernobyl disaster is still at 31, although this number is highly challenged. Some people estimate that hundreds of liquidators may have been exposed to lethal amounts of the invisible rays.
A total of eighteen days were spent with Viktor at the wheel of a truck in “the zone.” A golden service ribbon with an image of atoms flowing over the “bell of Chernobyl” is presented to recipients by the Ukraine Chernobyl Union. This emblem has become a resonant remembrance of the event that took place.
Viktor’s labour and the dosage of radiation he took in, which was 24.80 roentgen, are confirmed by a fragile document from the archives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
According to Vasyl Davydov, there are still three “liquidators” living in the hamlet of Vyschetarasivka. This town is a picturesque collection of backyard-fringed houses with a hazy view of the Zaporizhzhia plant’s six reactors and twin cooling towers.
He is a member of the group. He devoted three and a half months of his life to working on the cleaning of the Chernobyl disaster zone. During this time, he made 102 trips to “the zone,” where he used a dosimeter that made a crackling sound to determine radiation levels and razed contaminated buildings to the ground.
The man, who is 65 years old, is in his backyard unpacking his personal service medals onto a refrigerator that is lying on its side and being used as a temporary workstation. The other shows the figure of Atlas holding the world, with the image of a globe being replaced with the picture of the Chernobyl plant.
There are other photographs included. Davydov shown as a handsome soldier in uniform, smiling with his fellow soldiers and standing in front of a patriotic signal that read: “Soldier! On the grounds of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, we will bring life back.
Iodine pills, which may block a certain kind of radiation and were distributed across the community only a few days after Russian forces gained control of the facility, were given out in case of an emergency, according to Davydov.
However, it would seem that his time spent working in “the zone” has desensitised him to the possibility of the Zaporizhzhia plant going into reverse, even in the event of an emergency.
