Ukraine: Charming Chernobyl

In the early hours of April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded during a badly designed safety test, compounded by human error. The blast blew the reactor apart, ignited a graphite fire, and sent a plume of radioactive material high into the atmosphere. In the chaotic hours that followed, authorities made a desperate early attempt to douse the burning core with water. It failed. The water instantly evaporated, and radioactive steam was carried by the wind into a nearby pine forest. The trees absorbed the fallout, turned a haunting rust-red, and died. Nearly four decades later, that area — now known as the Red Forest — remains one of the most radioactive places on Earth.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Russian battalion moved into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and set up camp — astonishingly — in that same forest. As I was told during my visit, within a week the soldiers began falling seriously ill and were forced to abandon the site. Had they taken the tour — or at least read this article I later wrote for Dreams Abroad — they might have known enough to stay well clear of one of the most dangerous patches of ground in Europe.

I visited Chernobyl in October 2021, 35 years and six months after the accident and four months before the Russian invasion. I walked through streets that had been empty for decades, buildings slowly being reclaimed by trees and vines. As I moved through the silence, a line from the Kyiv-born writer Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg kept coming back to me: “You could cover the whole earth with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through.” In Chernobyl, that idea feels less like poetry and more like fact.

You can read the full story on Dreams Abroad, where I explore the history, the tour, and the strange, unsettling calm that still hangs over Chernobyl today. To access this story (The Chernobyl Tour: Experiencing a Post-Apocalyptic World), click on the logo below: