AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Today marks 40 years since the worst nuclear accident in history, the explosion at Chernobyl. In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear plant was in the USSR, then one country. Now it's in northern Ukraine. The accident was a shared trauma for Ukrainians and Russians. Now Russia's war on Ukraine has torn them apart. NPR's Joanna Kakissis reports.
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: In this Soviet-era high-rise in Ukraine's capital, the memory of Chernobyl lingers in every corridor. Some of its former workers and their families live here, forever shaped by the events of that terrible day, April 26, 1986.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED DISPATCHER: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED FIREFIGHTER: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: In a phone call from that day, an emergency dispatcher and a firefighter talk about an explosion at the third and fourth reactors of the nuclear power plant.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED DISPATCHER: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED FIREFIGHTER: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: The dispatcher asks, are there any people there? And the firefighter responds, yes. Zoya Perevozchenko's husband, Valery, was one of those people. He was on shift as the reactor sector foreman when Zoya got a call from her brother.
ZOYA PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: She says, "he asked me, is Valery home? Because there's been a big accident."
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "And everything inside me just went cold."
At the time, Chernobyl workers and their families lived in a town near the plant. Zoya rushed to the local hospital and found her husband on the third floor.
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "His face was so red, and he had tears in his eyes," she says, "and he told me, you know, I could not find Valery Khodemchuk. He died."
Khodemchuk was a pump operator. He worked with Zoya's husband.
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: Zoya recalls how Khodemchuk liked to fish and how he always shared his catch with friends. He was Chernobyl's first victim. His body was never recovered from the site of the explosion. His wife, Nataliia, spoke to a Ukrainian blogger in 2020, and she described how she kept the last shirt her husband wore before he headed to work that day.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NATALIIA KHODEMCHUK: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "It smelled like him, so I did not wash it," she says. "We buried it in a symbolic grave for him."
Zoya's husband, meanwhile, was flown to a hospital in Moscow. He had burns and radiation poisoning. She was allowed to visit him a few weeks later.
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken.)
KAKISSIS: "His skin was peeling off," she says, "his voice was hoarse, and then his brain began to swell, so he fell into a coma."
He shocked doctors by awaking a week later and asking for a beer. Zoya was thrilled he had some kind of appetite. She rushed to the supermarket that night.
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "And when we came back the next day," she says, "I asked the doctors, how's Valery? And they said, he is no longer with us." He was buried in Moscow.
Soviet authorities shut down the Chernobyl plant and moved some of the surviving workers and their families to a high-rise apartment building in Kyiv. Zoya lived on the third floor and Nataliia on the seventh.
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "We were both widows who went to Moscow to visit graves," Zoya says, "and that's how our friendship started."
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: Back at their apartment building in Kyiv, they also got to know Valentyna Ananenko, the wife of another Chernobyl plant worker. Valentyna's husband had heart problems because of the radiation, but he survived.
VALENTYNA ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "Radiation is invisible," Valentyna says. "It's not like the war now. We hear explosions. We see all this blood and death."
After Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Zoya's grandson joined the Ukrainian military. Nataliia knit wool socks and belts for Ukrainian soldiers, and Valentyna helped. The women also learned to live with constant Russian drone attacks.
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "I pulled this old mattress into the hallway," Valentyna says, "that's where my husband and I slept."
Hallways could protect against shrapnel and shattered glass. Zoya and Nataliia moved their mattresses there too. Then, late on the night of November 14 of last year, Zoya heard Russian drones flying very close to the building.
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: She says, "we woke up at about half past 1 a.m., and drones were being shot down right outside."
They were Shahed drones, which are like small jets with explosives, and one flew right into the high-rise of the Chernobyl families. Valentyna, who lived on the ninth floor, felt her entire apartment shake.
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "The whole place filled with smoke and we could not breathe," she says, "and the seventh floor was on fire, Nataliia's floor."
Nataliia came to Zoya's apartment, barefoot and in her nightgown.
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "Her legs were burnt and so was the hair on her head," Zoya says. "My grandson tried to spray burn cream on her legs." Nataliia had literally run through the fire in her home, pouring water on the flames and herself.
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "Maybe she was trying to put out the fire there," Valentyna says, "or maybe she was just looking for something."
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "She had photos of her husband and all these books about Chernobyl."
An ambulance took Nataliia to the hospital.
PEREVOZCHENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "By morning, she was in a coma," Zoya says, "and she didn't make it."
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
KAKISSIS: Everything burned in Nataliia's apartment. Valentyna takes us there.
Oh, and that was her bed, huh?
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: "People here say she took the hit for our building," Valentyna says.
It's so sad.
Forty years ago, Nataliia's husband was the first person to be killed by the explosion at Chernobyl. He was consumed by fire in a place he was trying to protect. And decades later, his wife ran through flames to do the same.
RASCOE: That was Joanna Kakissis. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
