This article is based on interviews and research conducted by the Reckoning Project, a multinational group of journalists and researchers focused on gathering evidence of war crimes in Ukraine.
On February 24, 2022, two Russian army commanders, dressed in black uniforms without any insignia, made their way into the office of Valentyn Heyko, the shift supervisor at the Chornobyl State Enterprise. Overlooking the decommissioned reactor, General Sergey Burakov and Colonel Andrey Frolenkov informed Heyko that they had taken control of the nuclear plant. This occurred on the same day that Russia invaded Ukraine, crossing the Belarusian border just a few miles to the north.
Heyko, as a professional, explained to the Russians that it was his duty to conduct a security briefing for any visitor to the site, to ensure they were aware of the numerous health hazards present at the location of the worst nuclear disaster in history. He clarified that they hadn’t actually taken control of an operational nuclear power plant. Instead, they had captured a highly contaminated area of a decommissioned facility that hadn’t produced any electricity since its shutdown in 2000. The Ukrainian government had established the Chornobyl State Enterprise in that same year to oversee the containment of the site’s environmental damage. (For the purposes of this article, I will be using the Ukrainian transliteration of Chornobyl, rather than the Russian, Chernobyl.)
Heyko, who had joined Chornobyl as a nuclear engineer just a year after the disaster, then proceeded to outline the safety precautions that visitors must follow. These included radiation checkups upon entering and exiting high-risk areas, a ban on eating or drinking outside designated areas, and various other restrictions that the Russian commanders and troops they had brought would have no opportunity to adhere to during their military operation. Heyko urged the Russians to strictly observe Ukrainian radiation safety laws for their own well-being. He had given this routine security briefing, filled with bureaucratic language, hundreds of times before.
Surprisingly, the Russian commanders immediately agreed to follow Heyko’s instructions, despite the fact that doing so required them to abide by the laws of the country they were trying to destroy militarily. They explained that their mission was to protect a strategically important facility that was now under their control. At that moment, Russian troops were rapidly advancing towards the Ukrainian capital, located just 100 miles to the south.
The Russians assured Heyko that their “special military operation” would only last a few days, after which the Ukrainian army would surrender, following the same protocols as the unit of the national guard previously in charge of Chornobyl. (The Ukrainians had indeed followed international protocols that prohibited hostilities on the territory of nuclear facilities.) In a conciliatory tone, the Russians added that they had captured the plant without firing a single shot. Heyko responded by expressing his hope that they would leave without firing a shot as well.
The Russian commanders seemed to assume that Chornobyl would be a brief stop on their way to Kyiv’s central square for a victory parade. However, their five-week stay at the contaminated site, where they forced the local staff to continue working at gunpoint, turned into a strategic nightmare. This botched occupation of the decommissioned nuclear plant foreshadowed Russia’s broader failures in Ukraine, born out of imperial arrogance and self-deception.
In Chornobyl, the phrase “before the war” carries a different meaning compared to the rest of Ukraine. It is often used to refer to the time before the 1986 nuclear disaster. In a grim slip of the tongue, some survivors of the disaster even refer to it as a nuclear war.
The Russian occupation of the previous year provided the personnel at Chornobyl State Enterprise with new shared experiences. On March 9, at 11:22 a.m., the plant experienced a full blackout when the electric grid in the Kyiv region was shelled. If electricity couldn’t be quickly restored, the staff wouldn’t be able to monitor the developments inside reactor No. 4, where a nuclear explosion remained a possibility. They also wouldn’t be able to cool the stored nuclear fuel within Chornobyl’s storage facility.
A full blackout at a nuclear plant is a scenario that haunts the dreams of scientists. Ironically, the fatal accident in Chornobyl in 1986 occurred during a failed safety test specifically designed for such emergencies, like an emergency shutdown in the event of a full blackout caused by a military attack. In 2022, Chornobyl relied on diesel generators for backup power, which could sustain the systems for 14 hours. After that, the outcome was uncertain.
Heyko urgently summoned the Russian commanders to his office, informing them that the Russian invasion of the Kyiv region was on the verge of causing another global-scale disaster. He needed one thing from the Russians to prevent it: diesel fuel, and lots of it.
The commanders agreed to provide the fuel, and the task of managing its supply fell to Valeriy Semenov, one of the plant’s engineers and the de facto head of security at the occupied facility. Heyko estimated that Chornobyl required approximately 30 tons of fuel per day. Over the next three nights, convoys of military fuel trucks arrived at the station, delivering the necessary amount of diesel. Soon, the disgruntled Russian commanders confronted Heyko, informing him that his decommissioned nuclear plant had consumed half of the fuel intended for their front lines near Kyiv.
The Russian commanders had valid reasons to be concerned. By mid-March, Russia’s blitzkrieg plan had fallen apart, with their troops trapped in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin, facing fierce resistance from Ukrainian locals. Due to vulnerable supply routes prone to local sabotage, ensuring fuel delivery to Russian troops was already a headache even before Chornobyl began consuming truckloads of diesel. The Russian commanders informed Heyko and Semenov that they had a better plan for fueling the nuclear plant.
On February 23, 2022, one day prior to the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government disconnected the country’s electric grid from the power grids of Belarus and Russia in a testing mode, connecting it instead to those of the European Union. When the invasion commenced, this testing mode became the new normal. However, the physical power lines connecting Ukraine to Belarus still existed, albeit on territory controlled by Russia. The Russians then reconnected Chornobyl to the Belarusian power grid. In this sense, the Ukrainian plant was once again dependent on Russia—not to provide energy to the empire, as it did during the Soviet era, but rather to deplete Moscow’s resources during its colonial war.
Vitaliy Popov, a 65-year-old engineer at Chornobyl, experienced a sense of déjà vu. In May 1986, he was on vacation with his wife and newborn child when news of the disaster reached him. He volunteered to return to Chornobyl and help contain the damage. In mid-March 2022, he learned that the Russians had finally agreed to rotate some of the exhausted personnel at the plant. Once again, he volunteered, this time to enter de facto captivity at the Russian-occupied disaster site, to ensure that 1986 would not repeat itself.
Alongside dozens of his colleagues, Popov embarked on the journey from Slavutych, the town where most Chornobyl personnel reside. Even reaching the plant posed risks. The route passed through Russian-occupied regions of northern Ukraine and a narrow section of Belarusian territory, where all the bridges spanning the Dnipro River had been destroyed. The nuclear specialists crossed the river on leaky wooden boats operated by local fishermen.
Upon arriving at the plant, Popov was greeted by Soviet-era military vehicles, just as it had been after the 1986 disaster. And just as before, young soldiers openly disregarded all norms… [HTML tags retained]
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