In a Kiev apartment building housing the families of Chernobyl workers, a wartime tragedy strikes three friends as they prepare to mark the 40th anniversary of the nuclear disaster.
Ayesha Roscoe, host:
Today marks 40 years since the Chernobyl explosion, the worst nuclear disaster in history. In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear plant was in the USSR, which was then a country. Now it is 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 Kakisis reports.
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: In this Soviet-era high-rise building in the Ukrainian capital, memories of Chernobyl are fresh in every corridor. Some of its former employees and their families live here, forever affected by the events of that fateful day on 26 April 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 explosions in the nuclear power plant’s third and fourth reactors.
(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 answers, yes. Zoya Perevozchenko’s husband Valery was one of those people. He was on shift as reactor sector foreman when Zoya got a call from her brother.
Zoya Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: “He asked me, ‘Is Valerie home? Because there’s been a big accident,'” she says.
Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken).
Kaksis: “And everything inside me grew cold.”
At the time, Chernobyl workers and their families lived in a town near the plant. Zoya reached the local hospital and found her husband on the third floor.
Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: “His face was very red, and he had tears in his eyes,” she says, “and he told me, you know, I couldn’t find Valery Khodemchuk. He died.”
Khodemchuk was a pump operator. He worked with Zoya’s husband.
Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: Zoya remembers how much Khodemchuk loved fishing and how he always shared his catch with friends. He was the first victim of Chernobyl. His body was never recovered from the blast site. His wife, Natalia, spoke to a Ukrainian blogger in 2020, and described how she had kept the last shirt her husband wore before leaving for work that day.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NATALIA KHODEMCHUK: (Non-English language spoken).
Kakisis: “It smelled like that, so I didn’t wash it,” she says. “We buried it in a symbolic grave for him.”
Meanwhile, Zoya’s husband was taken to a hospital in Moscow. He had burns and radiation poisoning. After a few weeks he was allowed to meet her.
Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken.)
KAKISSIS: “His skin was peeling,” she says, “his voice was hoarse, and then his brain started swelling, so he went into a coma.”
He surprised doctors by waking up a week later and asking for beer. Zoya was thrilled that she had some kind of appetite. She reached 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 is Valery? And they said, he’s not with us anymore.” He was buried in Moscow.
Soviet authorities closed the Chernobyl plant and relocated the few surviving workers and their families to a high-rise apartment building in Kiev. Zoya lived on the third floor and Natalia lived on the seventh floor.
Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken).
Kaksis: “We were both widows who went to Moscow to look at graves,” says Zoya, “and that’s how our friendship began.”
Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: In his apartment building in Kiev, he also got to know Valentina Ananenko, the wife of another Chernobyl plant employee. Valentina’s husband suffered heart problems due to radiation, but survived.
VALENTINA ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISIS: “Radiation is invisible,” says Valentina. “It’s not like war anymore. We hear explosions. We see all this blood and death.”
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Zoya’s grandson joins the Ukrainian military. Natalia knitted woolen socks and belts for Ukrainian soldiers, and Valentina helped. The women also learned to live with frequent Russian drone attacks.
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
Kakisis: “I dragged this old mattress into the hallway,” Valentina says, “that’s where my husband and I used to sleep.”
Hallways can protect against shrapnel and broken glass. Zoya and Natalia also kept their mattresses there. Then, late at night on November 14 last year, Zoya heard Russian drones flying very close to the building.
Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: “We woke up about 1:30 a.m. and right outside, drones were being shot down,” she says.
They were martyr drones, which are like small jets with explosives, and one flew directly into the high-rise buildings of Chernobyl families. Valentina, who lived on the ninth floor, felt her entire apartment shaking.
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: “The whole place was filled with smoke and we couldn’t breathe,” she says, “and the seventh floor was on fire, Natalia’s floor.”
Natalia came to Zoya’s apartment barefoot and in a nightgown.
Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken).
Kakisis: “His legs were burnt and the hair on his head were burnt too,” says Zoya. “My grandson tried to sprinkle burn cream on his feet.” Natalia literally ran through a fire in her house, dousing the flames and herself with water.
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: “Maybe she was trying to put out a fire in there,” Valentina says, “or maybe she was just looking for something.”
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
Kakisis: “She had photos of her husband and all these books about Chernobyl.”
An ambulance took Natalia to the hospital.
Perevozchenko: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: “By the morning, she was in a coma,” Zoya says, “and she didn’t recover.”
(sound of footsteps)
KAKISSIS: Everything in Natalia’s apartment burned down. Valentina takes us there.
Oh, and that was his bed, huh?
ANANENKO: (Non-English language spoken).
Kakisis: “People here say he damaged our building,” says Valentina.
This is very sad.
Forty years ago, Natalia’s husband was the first person to die in the Chernobyl explosion. He was destroyed in the fire at the very spot he was trying to save. And decades later, his wife ran into flames for doing the same.
RASCO: That was Joanna Kakissis.
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