Conflicts

On February 24, 2022, the first day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, armored vehicles approached the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine.

It was the most direct way for them to reach the capital and an extraordinarily reckless plan after the disaster that had occurred there three decades earlier. The Russian occupation of the plant lasted thirty-five days.

Serhii Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, with his new book published in September 2024 and entitled “Chernobyl Roulette: War in the Nuclear Disaster Zone”, offers a very precise and comprehensive account of this situation.

It's an event that could have led to a second nuclear tragedy if it were not for the intervention of the Ukrainian workers present on site.

“Only the dedication and determination of the Ukrainian personnel, who were taken hostage and worked in shifts for weeks instead of days, allowed the world to avoid a new Chernobyl accident. They had to make life-and-death decisions about cooperation or resistance, balancing their loyalty to their families, their homeland, and the innocent civilians in Ukraine and elsewhere who would suffer the consequences of a nuclear accident if it happened," Plokhy writes.

The choices they made helped save the world from a repetition of Chernobyl.

(MH with AmBar/Source: The Economist/Photo: DPA/Anadolu/Gian Marco Benedetto)