SLAVUTYCH, Ukraine — People streamed into the central square of Slavutych in the early hours of Sunday, placing candles on a large radiation hazard symbol laid out on the ground as a midnight commemoration began for those killed in the Chernobyl disaster 40 years ago and the thousands who risked deadly radiation exposure to contain its aftermath.
Residents show up for the vigil each year despite wartime curfews and official warnings against large gatherings during Russia's war on Ukraine.
The April 26, 1986 disaster shone a spotlight on lax safety standards and government secrecy in what was then the Soviet Union. The explosion was not reported by Soviet authorities for two days, only after winds had carried the fallout across Europe and Swedish experts had gone public with their concerns.
About 600,000 people, often referred to as Chernobyl's "liquidators," were sent in to fight the fire at the nuclear plant and clean up the worst of its contamination. Thirty workers died within months from either the explosion or acute radiation sickness. The accident exposed millions in the region to dangerous levels of radiation and forced a wide-scale, permanent evacuation of hundreds of towns and villages in Ukraine and Belarus.
The city of Slavutych, around 50 kilometers (32 miles) from the former plant, dates to this period. While most evacuees were resettled across nearby districts in Kyiv region, in late 1986 Soviet authorities began building what would become the city to house workers from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and their families. The first residents moved in around 1988.
Since then, the city has endured a brief Russian occupation during Moscow's failed push to seize the Ukrainian capital in early days of the war, as well as harsh winters — especially the last one, when blackouts forced some residents to cook meals over open fires in the streets.
People of all ages gathered in the square, some arriving as families carrying spring tulips and daffodils. They lined up in a broad plaza framed by Soviet-era apartment blocks, where a memorial stands near a row of posters honoring local residents killed in the war.
Liudmyla Liubyva, 71, came to the ceremony with a friend. She used to attend with her husband, who worked at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant but later developed a disability linked to radiation exposure, and lost the ability to walk, she said.
Liubyva said it was important to honor those who sacrificed their health in the aftermath of the disaster, but Russia’s war has revived fears that the danger was never fully left behind.
"When the drone struck the arch, it felt like the world could return to 1986," she said, referring to a Russian drone strike in 2025 that damaged the New Safe Confinement structure, the massive dome built to contain radiation from the destroyed reactor. "We all — young and old alike — must protect our land, because it is so vulnerable."
Soft music played in the background as poetry about the disaster drifted over loudspeakers. “Years pass, generations change, but the pain of Chernobyl does not fade,” a woman’s voice recited. As the words echoed across the square, people dressed in white protective suits and face masks, symbolizing the liquidators, stood in silence holding candles.
Larysa Panova, 67, often recalls the day of the accident that forced her to leave her native hometown of Chernobyl, which transliterate as Chornobyl, and begin a new life in Slavutych. Though the new city has long since become home, she still thinks of the forests and rich nature of the place she left behind.
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, she regularly travelled back to visit relatives who remained there or simply to spend time in the land where she grew up. But with the war, access to the exclusion zone became restricted.
“I never stop thinking of Chernobyl as my homeland,” she said. “You remember your school, your childhood, your youth — everything happened there, in Chernobyl.”
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AP reporters Vasilisa Stepanenko and Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv contributed.
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