In the early hours of the morning of April 30, 1986, a radioactive cloud blanketed the city on the eve of its annual May Day festivities.
A group of foreign tourists visits the Wormwood Star Memorial in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Lt. Col. Viktor Chershnev, second from left, with fellow Soviet officers in 1988. Chershnev was the deputy commander and chief engineer of the Kiev Air Defense Brigade, responsible for readiness at an antiaircraft missile base near the Chernobyl nuclear plant. has been almost as far-reaching as the initial tragedy and has spurred a daily line of buses packed with foreign tourists at the gate of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which extends for 20 miles around the plant.
The abandoned Chernobyl early warning radar station just a few miles from the nuclear power plant was designed to detect launches of U.S. missiles. “After that, we were ordered to go back and salvage the remaining equipment that could be dismantled.” “Due to the Chernobyl catastrophe, the Soviet Union’s strategic defenses were dealt a major blow, as they were rendered blind in the West flank by the closure of the Chernobyl early warning station due to lack of power and air protection,” said Chershnev’s former comrade-in arms, retired Lt. Gen. Igor Romanenko, the former deputy chief of the Ukrainian general staff.
“They were to be used only in case of clear danger of nuclear attack,” he said in an interview. “It worked like this: The decision was to be made in Moscow. Moscow would send me, as a brigade commander, a coded message to set the nuclear-headed missiles in a combat position. Then I was supposed to receive another coded message authorizing the launch. And only then would I issue an order to the commanders of my battalions to push the button.
“My men washed the … stuff with the hardest brushes ever until they were falling over with fatigue and with bleeding blisters on their hands, but nothing helped,” said Chershnev. “We kept measuring the radiation and it was still the same, still high.” The soldiers were discharged while the officers continued to serve in various units. They never really knew how much radiation they were exposed to, Chershnev said.
“All those I personally know and have kept track of all these years are either badly sick like myself or dead by now. My driver who accompanied me on all the convoys was discharged and died at 28. My fellow deputy brigade commander, … who was also dealing with contaminated equipment, died [in 1995] of cancer. Warrant Officer Petro Pozyura went blind. And so on and so forth. I have a heart ailment and every year spend a couple of weeks in hospital.
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