The famous international journalist Gerd Ludwig spent many years filming the consequences of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In 1986, a series of mistakes at a nuclear power plant led to an explosion that forced about a quarter of a million people to flee their homes forever to escape radiation and fallout.

Ludwig, commissioned by National Geographic Magazine, traveled to the site and surrounding areas several times in 1993, 2005 and 2011 and documented how people and places were irrevocably changed by the tragedy.

In 2011, his trip was partially funded by Kickstarter. Now Ludwig has released an application for iPad, which features more than 150 photos, videos and interactive panoramic footage. Below is a small selection of the photographer's work made during the years of the ongoing tragedy.

1. On April 26, 1986, the operators of this turbine room of reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, while carrying out routine maintenance, made a series of fatal errors that led to the destruction of the reactor and the most serious accident in the history of world nuclear power. Today the turbine hall of the fourth power unit is still abandoned, it is still very high level radiation.

2. Workers wearing respirators and plastic protective suits stopped briefly to rest. They are drilling holes to install additional piles inside the sarcophagus. It's a dangerous job: the radiation levels here are so high that they have to constantly monitor Geiger counters and dosimeters, and the permitted work time is limited to 15 minutes a day.

3. For many years, desperate attempts were made to strengthen the roof of the Shelter and prevent it from collapsing. Inside the sarcophagus, dimly lit tunnels lead to gloomy rooms littered with wires, pieces of twisted metal and other debris. Due to the collapse of the walls, everything around is covered with radioactive dust. Work to stabilize the sarcophagus has been completed, and today the radioactive insides of the reactor are waiting to be dismantled.

4. Previously, workers had to climb dangerous stairs to reach the area below the reactor's molten core, although the extremely high levels of radiation allow only a few minutes in this area. In order to speed up the descent, a gentle corridor was built, the so-called inclined staircase.

5. Workers who are building a new Shelter, costing about $2.2. billion, receive dangerous doses of radiation while near the sarcophagus. The new arch-shaped structure, weighing 29,000 tons, 105 m high and 257 m wide, will cover the existing sarcophagus and allow the dismantling of the outdated shelter. To create the strongest possible foundation for the new structure, 396 huge metal pipes will be driven into the ground to a depth of 25 m.

6. The roof of the Polesie Hotel in the center of Pripyat offers views of the ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Previously, 50,000 people lived in Pripyat; now it is a ghost town, gradually overgrown with weeds.

7. Pripyat is located less than three kilometers from the reactor. The city was built in the 1970s. for nuclear scientists and employees of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Once the population of Pripyat was almost 50,000 people, life was in full swing here. The authorities did not immediately notify the population about the accident; the evacuation began only 36 hours after the explosion.

Abandoned school in Pripyat. Ukraine, 2005. Photo: Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE

8. When the authorities Soviet Union In the end, the evacuation was announced; many simply did not have time to gather. The Soviet Union officially declared the disaster only three days after the explosion, when the radioactive cloud reached Sweden and Swedish scientists in the laboratory discovered radioactive contamination on their shoes.

9. Nineteen years after the disaster, empty schools and kindergartens in Pripyat - once largest city, which fell into the exclusion zone, with a population of 50,000 people, remain a silent reminder of the tragic events. Part of the abandoned school building has since collapsed.

10. On the day of the disaster, unsuspecting children were calmly playing kindergarten in Pripyat, a satellite city of the nuclear power plant. The next day they were evacuated. They had to leave everything, even their favorite dolls and toys.

11. The wind is blowing in an abandoned city. On April 26, 1986, the amusement park was preparing for the May Day holidays. At this time, less than three kilometers from here, the 4th reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded.

12. When the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, 1986, this amusement park in Pripyat with a race track and a Ferris wheel was preparing for the May 1 celebration. 25 years have passed since then, and the dilapidated park has become a symbol of the abandoned city. Now it is one of the attractions for tourists who have flooded Pripyat recently.

13. In 2011, the Ukrainian government officially allowed tourist travel to the exclusion zone. In the photo: tourists wander through the garbage-strewn corridors and empty classrooms of one of the Pripyat schools. The dining room floor is littered with hundreds of discarded gas masks. One of the tourists brought his own - not for protection from radiation, but for the sake of a funny photo.

14. The nuclear disaster led to radioactive contamination of tens of thousands of square kilometers. 150,000 people within a 30 km radius were forced to flee their homes in a hurry. Now almost all wooden huts in the villages that fell into the exclusion zone stand abandoned, and nature is gradually taking over these remnants of civilization.

15. 92-year-old Kharitina Decha is one of several hundred elderly people who have returned to their villages in the exclusion zone. It is important for her to die on her own land, even if abandoned and forgotten by everyone.

16. In the sink are tomatoes from the garden of an elderly couple, Ivan Martynenko (he’s 77) and Gapa Semenenko (she’s 82). They are both deaf. After being evacuated, several hundred elderly people returned to their home. These people live mainly on what they can grow in contaminated soil.

17. Oleg Shapiro (54 years old) and Dima Bogdanovich (13 years old) are being treated for thyroid cancer at the Minsk hospital. Here similar operations are performed every day.

Oleg is a liquidator of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant; he received a very large dose of radiation. This is already his third operation.

Dima’s mother is sure that her son got cancer due to radioactive fallout, but his doctors take a more cautious point of view. Officials are often ordered to downplay the dangers of radiation.

18. Sixteen-year-old Dima Pyko is being treated for lymphoma at the Children's Oncology Center (Oncology and Hematology Center) near Minsk in the village. Lesnoye. The center was built with serious financial support from Austria after the number of childhood cancers sharply increased in those regions of Belarus where there was a lot of radioactive fallout after the Chernobyl disaster.

19. Five-year-old Igor was born with serious mental and physical defects. His parents abandoned him, and now he, along with 150 other disabled children, lives in a specialized orphanage.

This is just one of similar institutions in southern Belarus that is supported by the international charity organization “Children of Chernobyl”. It was created by Edie Roche in 1991 to help child victims of the worst nuclear disaster in the world.

20. Veronica Chechet is only five years old. She suffers from leukemia and is undergoing treatment at the Center for Radiation Medicine in Kyiv. Her mother, Elena Medvedeva (29 years old), was born four years before the Chernobyl disaster near Chernigov - after the explosion, a lot of radioactive fallout fell on the city. According to doctors, the illnesses of many patients are directly related to the release of radiation as a result of the accident.

21. A mentally retarded boy smells a tulip in one of the orphanages in Belarus.

It is believed that in regions where radioactive fallout occurred, more children are born with various developmental defects and mental disabilities. This belief is shared by many—but not all—in the scientific community. International charities created after the disaster continue to help families in need of support and orphanages where children affected by radioactive fallout live.

22. Every year on the anniversary of the accident - April 26 - a nightly memorial service is held at the Firefighters Monument in memory of all those who died as a result of this disaster. Two people died directly during the explosion, another 28 firefighters and nuclear power plant employees died shortly after the disaster, having received a lethal dose of radiation. Since then, many thousands more have died from cancer and social upheaval due to mass evacuation.

Translation from English by Olga Antonova

Women and children were the first to be evacuated. There was a shortage of buses in this corner of the former Soviet Union. To take 50 thousand people out of the city, buses from other regions of the country came here. The length of the bus column was 20 kilometers, which meant that when the first bus left Pripyat, the last one could no longer see the pipes of the power plant. In less than three hours, the city was completely empty. He will remain this way forever. At the beginning of May, the evacuation of people living in the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl was organized. Disinfection work was carried out in 1,840 settlements. However, the Chernobyl exclusion zone was not developed until 1994, when the last residents of the villages in its western part were moved to new apartments in the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions.

Today Pripyat is a city of ghosts. Despite the fact that no one lives there, the city has its own grace and atmosphere. It did not cease to exist, unlike neighboring villages, which were buried in the ground by excavators. They are only indicated on road signs and village maps. Pripyat, as well as the entire 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, is guarded by police and patrol services. Despite their constant vigil, the city was repeatedly subjected to robbery and looting. The entire city was plundered. There is not a single apartment left where the thieves have not visited and taken all the jewelry. In 1987, residents had the opportunity to return to collect a small portion of their belongings. The Jupiter military plant operated until 1997; The famous Lazurny swimming pool operated until 1998. At the moment, they have been looted and destroyed even more than apartments and schools in the city combined. There are three other parts of the city that are still in use: a laundry (for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant), garages for trucks, and a deep well with a pumping station that supplies water to the power plant.

The city is full of 1980s graffiti, signs, books and images, mostly related to Lenin. His slogans and portraits are everywhere - in the palace of culture, hotel, hospital, police station, as well as in schools and kindergartens. Walking around the city is like going back in time, the only difference is that there is no one here, not even birds in the sky. You can only imagine the picture of the era when the city flourished, during the tour we will show you historical photos. To give you a vivid impression of the times of the Soviet Union, we offer Soviet uniform, a retro walk in our RETRO TOUR. Everything was built from concrete. All buildings are of the same type, as in other cities built under the Soviet Union. Some houses are overgrown with trees so that they are barely visible from the road, and some buildings are so worn out that they collapsed from large quantity drank snow. Chernobyl is a living example of how Mother Nature takes its toll on the efforts of many people. In a few decades, only ruins will remain of the city. There is no corner like this in the world.

On June 21, 2017, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the Chernobyl NPP decommissioning program. In particular, by 2020 it is planned to begin work on the conservation of Chernobyl NPP units No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, put into operation ISF-2 (spent nuclear fuel storage facility) and begin work on the transportation of spent nuclear fuel from ISF-1. It is also planned to put into operation a plant for processing liquid radioactive waste, an industrial complex for handling solid radioactive waste, and begin work on processing radioactive waste accumulated during the operation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

In addition, on June 7, 2017, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the project for the construction of a centralized storage facility for spent nuclear fuel from VVER-type reactors of domestic nuclear power plants (CSSF). The facility is planned to be built between the villages of Staraya Krasnitsa, Buryakovka, Chistogalovka and Stechanka in the Kyiv region. The total estimated cost of the central nuclear storage facility, which is planned to be built over 16 years, is UAH 37 billion (more than $1.42 billion).

What's happening at the station now?

Currently, a number of international projects are being implemented at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to support the decommissioning of power units and the transformation of the Shelter facility into an environmentally friendly system. After the accident, nuclear fuel was unloaded from all shutdown reactors and cooling pools and moved for temporary storage to the spent nuclear fuel storage facility.

At the end of November last year, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant completed the process of covering the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with a new protective arch. It was needed due to the deterioration of the old sarcophagus, which was built immediately after the accident at the station in 1986.

The construction of the new arch was carried out by the international consortium Novarka. The project was financed by the international donor fund “Shelter” under the management of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The total construction cost was approximately 1.5 billion euros.

Construction of a dry storage facility for spent nuclear fuel (ISF-2) continues today on the territory of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Currently, spent fuel at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site is stored in a temporary “wet type” storage facility, built back in Soviet times(ISF-1), and in cooling pools. The temporary storage facility for spent nuclear fuel (ISF-2) will provide the possibility of “dry” storage of more than 20 thousand spent fuel assemblies for a period of at least 100 years. The project is funded by the Nuclear Safety Account (NSA) and is conducted by Holtec International, USA.

At the Chernobyl NPP, work is also underway to construct a new arch (Shelter-2). The new safe confinement is an insulating arched structure over the 4th Chernobyl nuclear power plant unit, destroyed as a result of the accident. Its construction began in 2007. Initially, it was assumed that the project would be ready by 2012-2013, but due to insufficient funding, the completion date was delayed. Completion of the project and its commissioning are expected in November 2017. After completion of construction, subject to sufficient international funding, preparations will begin for dismantling the previous Shelter and reactor structures.

When will the final decommissioning of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant take place?

Final decommissioning could last until 2065. Until 2022, it is planned to completely close and preserve the reactors and the most “dirty” equipment, after which, for more than 20 years (until 2045), when the natural half-life of radionuclides occurs, conservation, dismantling and recycling of the remaining equipment and structures will begin.

The Orthodox Church, wherever it is - sometimes in places not at all intended for life - transforms everything around it. A striking example of this is the Temple of the Prophet Elijah in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Throughout the Zone there is devastation and desolation, but the temple, through the efforts of the abbot and a handful of parishioners, is well maintained and services are held in it. Neskuchny Garden correspondents Deacon Fyodor KOTRELEV and Konstantin SHAPKIN were convinced that the Orthodox church is the only island of normal life in Chernobyl.

Every year on April 26, next to the same 4th power unit, a meeting is held in memory of all those who died from the disaster. For several years now, through the efforts of Father Nikolai Yakushin, the ceremony has begun with a memorial service.
And at 1.23 am on April 26, the bell installed in the courtyard of the Elias Church in Chernobyl rings as many times as the number of years that have passed since the disaster. This year the bell rang 21 times

Construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) began in 1970, 19 kilometers from the regional center of the Kyiv region, Chernobyl. In the same year, two kilometers from nuclear power plant the city of Pripyat was built, in which the Chernobyl maintenance personnel settled - at the time of the accident, the population of the city was 60 thousand people (15 thousand people lived in Chernobyl). On September 26, 1977, the first power unit of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant produced the first kilowatts of electricity. 19 years later, on the night of April 26, 1986, for still unclear reasons, an explosion occurred at the 4th power unit, resulting in the release of a gigantic amount of radioactive materials into the atmosphere. About 500 thousand people took part in eliminating the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. From the first days of the accident to this day, there has been a 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which can only be entered with a special permit. Within the zone around various objects there are special smaller areas.

A plaque installed in the courtyard of the Temple of Elijah the Prophet. “The sound of sorrow. Stop and bow your head - before you is the Drevlyansky land in the grief of a nuclear disaster. Before the people who lived here for centuries and, like sand, scattered throughout the world. God, help us sinners to overcome this misfortune."

People return to Chernobyl (19 km from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant), unlike Pripyat (3 km)

Pripyat was built in 1970, just three kilometers from the nuclear power plant, so that the Chernobyl NPP employees who lived in the city could conveniently get to work. This proximity ruined the city: the background radiation here is so high that it is completely impossible to live

It has been 21 years since entry into the city of nuclear scientists, Pripyat, has been strictly prohibited: the 1986 disaster, the causes of which are still unclear, made the city dangerous for people. Only marauders and other adventurers enter the Zone. It was they who left their drawings on the walls of the Pripyat cultural center, which was overgrown with forest.

Chernobyl silence

Empty houses, overgrown with small, weedy forests and entwined with a jungle of ivy. Dozens, hundreds of empty houses. If the windows are shuttered, the house looks like a dead man with his eyes closed. And if the shutters are open and the window openings gape empty, then it looks like a death cry. There are practically no cars here, and therefore there is complete silence, broken only by the singing of birds, which makes it even creepier.

The city of Chernobyl is a Zone. Some call it dead, others call it an official exclusion zone, but everyone says “zone.” You always remember Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

From time to time, people dressed in camouflage uniforms walk along the streets overgrown with small trees. On the chest there is a patch with your blood type, in your pocket there is a small dosimeter, which must be regularly checked in order to find out how much radiation you have received. These people work at Chernobylservice and are needed here to service the sarcophagus. These are dosimetrists who constantly measure the radioactive background in the Zone, these are engineers and builders who maintain the reinforced concrete sarcophagus covering the 4th power unit of the station in order, these are drivers of special equipment that transport radioactive objects to special burial sites. NS correspondents met one of the employees of Chernobylservice, dosimetrist Nikolai from Taganrog, shortly after arriving in Chernobyl.

Walking around the city, we found ourselves in the Memory Park - on a grassy area there are freshly painted fire trucks, armored personnel carriers and other special equipment. We decided to attach a pocket dosimeter to the cars, which instantly showed increased radiation. At that moment there was a loud cry: “What are you doing there?!” Go back immediately!” A middle-aged man in a camouflage suit and with a large dosimeter over his shoulder was shouting. “There may be an increased background there,” Nikolai told us. But looking at the numbers recorded by our device, the dosimetrist was seriously scared: “This, guys, is something too much!” Nikolai ran to the equipment and turned on his dosimeter. However, he was unable to find the “dirty spot”: apparently, the spot was small, and we could not show its exact location.

People in camouflage - engineers, dosimetrists, builders - work on the sarcophagus covering the 4th block of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. “Someone has to do this work,” they say

Monitoring radiation levels in Chernobyl is mandatory

Monument to the heroes of Chernobyl. The prototype of this monument was the fire crew of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was on duty on the night of the disaster. Almost all of his fighters died

There are several hundred people like Nikolai here in the Zone. They come for a few days and return home - this is called the rotation method. “Well, someone has to do this work,” they say calmly. “And the salaries here are higher than on the other side of the zone.”

April 26 marked 21 years since the day when a very nice Ukrainian town became one of the synonyms of misfortune, horror, and disaster. The night of April 26, 1986, when the reactor of the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, divided the lives of thousands of people into “before” and “after.” And this furrow ran so deep through people’s lives that to this day, almost twenty-one years later, they remember every minute of the tragedy. For example, one recalls: “On the morning of the 27th at half past nine I left the house, and I was met by people in chemical protective equipment...” - “No, they weren’t given a ride at half past nine yet, it was already in the afternoon, closer to twelve!” And so the Chernobyl and Pripyat residents can tell everything minute by minute. Many say that they have been dreaming about the catastrophe all these years, and the Zone does not seem to want to let them go. “I was thirteen years old when the explosion occurred,” recalls Kiev resident Roman. — We lived in Pripyat: our parents worked at the station. I remember, as soon as I learned about the accident from the guys, I wanted to take a moped from the garage and go to the station - we didn’t understand anything at the time. But he couldn’t open the garage door: the lock was jammed and wouldn’t move. Maybe that’s why I’m still alive. The next day we were evacuated. So many years have passed, but I still come to Chernobyl and Pripyat every year. Why? I don’t know, it’s pulling, that’s all. All these years I have been dreaming about Pripyat every night! And only a few years ago I lost the constant feeling of anxiety that I had all the years after the accident.” Now Pripyat is absolutely empty. The background radiation in the city is very high, it is absolutely impossible to live there. Block high-rise buildings stand empty, the streets are overgrown with forest. The apartments are littered with broken furniture, scraps of wallpaper, clothes, and shoes. The floor is strewn with broken glass. This is the result of 20 years of activity by time and looters. According to engineers, these houses will never become residential again: the degree of destruction is too great.

Self-settlers

Having learned that everything in Chernobyl interests us, our new acquaintance, Chernobylservice auto mechanic Petro, decided to show the most important, from his point of view, self-settlers: “Imagine, some of them even in the days general evacuation, when everyone fled from here, they didn’t leave. This is where we are going!” Along the Chernobyl streets, Petro leads us somewhere deeper into the neighborhoods. Twilight quickly turns into night darkness, it’s nine o’clock in the evening. Only later were we told that there is a curfew in Chernobyl, 20.00, after which any movement around the city is strictly prohibited. But either we were lucky, or Petro knew where to go, we weren’t caught. Only with the onset of night in Chernobyl do signs of human habitation become visible - here and there there are lights in the windows. There are, however, several five-story buildings here where shift workers live - it’s always crowded and bright. But basically Chernobyl is all one-story, private. Before the revolution, the city was located in the Pale of Settlement, and more than half of the Jews lived here. In Chernobyl they still show the grave of one and the founders of Hasidism, Nahum of Chernobyl. During the Great Patriotic War most of the Jews were exterminated by the Germans. And all the same, if not for the catastrophe, the city could have looked like Vitebsk from Chagall’s paintings: small, once whitewashed houses, some kind of sheds wicker from branches...

And the light in the windows are self-settlers, people who, for various reasons, chose to live among the spots of radioactive contamination, with a dosimeter in their hands. These are mostly old pensioners who, as they themselves say, have nothing to lose. There are two or three dozen of them here.

Petro has been working in Chernobyl on a rotational basis in a car repair shop for the twenty years since the disaster. “Firstly, I love Chernobyl, and secondly, there is work here, but not outside the Zone,” he explains. With the confidence of a frequent guest, Petro jumps over the fence, opens the gate from the inside, knocks on the window: “Semyonich, open it!” The owner, an old, but still not decrepit man, lets us into the house: “Stepan Semenych,” he introduces himself, “and my sister-in-law, Grandma Natalka.” Grandmother is somewhat frightened, but seeing Peter’s familiar face, she smiles and invites us to enter. Everything in the house is somewhat shabby and a little neglected, as happens with old people. But in every red corner there is a good-quality large icon, and this gives a feeling of solidity and comfort. On the bookshelf is a photograph of the owners in their youth - everything is as it should be - on the table are fresh rolls baked by grandmother Natalka.

Stepan Semenovich and Baba Natalka are native Chernobyl residents. “After the accident, they gave us an apartment in another city,” said Stepan Semenovich, “I went, looked and realized: we won’t be able to live in a foreign land. So they stayed here in Chernobyl. And nothing, we live"

After the Holocaust, they were given housing in one of the cities of Ukraine, but after going there for a couple of days, Semenych realized: I would not live. And they returned to Chernobyl.

- How did you live? Wasn't it scary?

- And so we lived. When the station exploded, we were just planting potatoes and tomatoes. So they didn't die of hunger. And the store was open: the liquidators also had to live somehow,” recalls Stepan Semenych.

The city was rapidly emptying out; by the beginning of May, women, old people and children were taken out, a little later than men. To avoid panic, people were told that they were leaving their homes for two or three days, so they took money, documents and a change of clothes with them. As soon as Chernobyl was empty, the looting began. First, the police went door to door in search of goods, then the military, and only later “specialists” began to visit generalist" “I remember,” says Semenych, “in the first days I fought with the police more than once. Yes, yes, I used to come out with an ax and say just like that: well, they say, put back everything you took, otherwise I’ll smash your whole car!”

Self-settlers live on pensions and from their gardens. Of course, before digging a new bed, they “probe” the soil with a dosimeter. If the dosimeter shows an increased background, they dig a few meters away. They also catch and eat fish from the Pripyat River, on which the city stands. They claim that there is even less radiation in fish than in fish bought at the market in Kyiv. They also eat mushrooms from the surrounding forests. But only white ones: for some reason they are the only ones who do not accumulate radiation. “We are not afraid of radiation,” say the Samoselians, “after all, we are still alive, which means it is not so scary! And those who left their homes then—where are they now? Yes, most of them have already died, but we lived here, we live and will live until we die of old age!”

I will build my Church

Ask any person in Chernobyl, even if he is a shift worker and came here for the first time only yesterday, how to get to the Elias Church. They will show you. Because the Temple of the Prophet Elijah is, without any exaggeration, the liveliest place in the entire 30-kilometer exclusion zone. Self-settlers have life, and in the church fence of the Elias Church there is truly Life with a capital letter. If Chernobyl and that's it settlements The farther the zones go, the more they plunge into thickets and fall apart, here flowers bloom along neat gravel paths, here there is a trimmed lawn on which tables are set for summer meals. There are freshly whitewashed walls and shining gold domes. After walking through empty and silent Chernobyl, you feel like the ambassadors of Prince Vladimir in St. Sophia. It seems that even the birds sing louder here.

And just seven years ago, the temple matched the general Chernobyl landscape: boarded up windows, rickety domes, peeling walls. And so it was as long as Nikolai Yakushin, a former parishioner of the Elias Church, had the strength to look at it. Now Archpriest Nikolai Yakushin is the rector of the Elias Church, but then he was just a machine operator, an employee of one of the agricultural complexes. “You see,” says Fr. Nikolai, I am a native Chernobyl resident, and my wife, Mother Lyubov, is also from here. After the accident, of course, we left, they gave us an apartment in Kyiv, but we still came to Chernobyl regularly: to visit the graves in the cemetery, to look at our native places. And the Ilyinsky Church is especially dear to us: we were baptized and married here, and my mother and grandmother were parishioners here. In general, we love him very much.”
Once, having arrived in Chernobyl, Nikolai Yakushin saw that the temple simply began to fall apart: the dome of the bell tower was about to fall, the porch had broken off the wall and was growing into the ground. He realized that something had to be done. I went to the administration of the exclusion zone: give me boards, give me roofing iron, give me paint. “They were surprised: who are you? - recalls Fr. Nikolai. - I told them: yes, I am a parishioner of this temple! And they say: you should get out of here. So I went to Vladyka Mitrofan.”

The vicar of the Kyiv Metropolitan, Archbishop of Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky Mitrofan, greeted Nicholas cordially. “And I said to him: is it not possible to appoint a rector to Chernobyl, otherwise everyone is chasing me, as an unofficial person? The Lord says: we will search. A month passes, the bishop calls me and says: aren’t you studying at our seminary? I actually studied at the seminary then: I entered just like that, to improve my education. And he: come and take the parish in Chernobyl, otherwise no one here wants to go there, they’re afraid.” So Nikolai Yakushin became a deacon, and then a priest.
The rector of the temple in Chernobyl should be just such a person. Father Nikolai combines incredible energy (after all, Chernobyl is, after all, a city of power engineers!) with amazing good nature: the smile never leaves his face, and it’s simply impossible to imagine him angry! All secular skills - engineering, technical, mechanical, construction - were very useful to the new rector of the Elias Church. “I leveled the dome myself,” Mother Lyubov reports with undisguised pride. “It was scary to watch, but I built some kind of scaffolding, tied myself with a rope, prayed and climbed.” The renovation of the church was also supervised by the Father Superior himself. He also decorated the temple himself: no matter what you ask about in the temple - about the fancy metal flowers on the doors, about the tombs in which particles of holy relics rest - there is only one answer: the priest did it himself. Of course, his mother helps Father Nikolai in everything. She is behind the box, and on the choir, and in the parish hotel, where guests like NS correspondents or the clergy, who sometimes come to concelebrate with Father Nikolai, stay, and in the refectory. In a word - harmony. The only thing I regret is that the parish is very small. But how can he be big here, in Chernobyl? Self-settlers are old and frail, shift workers are overloaded with work. And yet there is a parish, although small, in Chernobyl. There are five or six people at Sunday liturgy, and more on holidays. On such days of the church year as Holy Saturday, Easter and Radonitsa, which is called “Grobki” here, several hundred people come.

Of course, Father Nikolai has a hard time: a small parish means a small income. And a lot of work is required in the Elias Church: to install heating, to cover the roof, and to cut down the small forests that have overgrown the church yard in the years since the Holocaust. Three years ago, the rector went to his bishop for advice: what to do? And Bishop Mitrofan blessed Father Nicholas to perform procession throughout the Ukrainian dioceses with the revered icon of the Elijah Church - the image of St. Nicholas. According to the temple inventory, this icon was already revered as miraculous in the 18th century: cases of healing from it were repeatedly recorded. It is with this icon that Father Nikolai travels around the parishes. All donations go to maintaining the Elias Church: “That’s what we say: St. Nicholas sent us heating in the church. A very great helper!” - says Mother Lyubov.

And last year, on the twenty-year anniversary Chernobyl accident, the Ilyinsky Church was granted another shrine by the Metropolitan of Kyiv: the icon of the Savior of Chernobyl - perhaps one of the most unusual icons in iconography that we have ever seen. Christ, the Mother of God, Archangel Michael, the souls of those killed in the Holocaust, rescuers in gas masks, doctors and energy workers in white coats - unusual, too “modern” characters very convincingly remind us of how recently the Chernobyl tragedy occurred. The image was painted in 2003 with the blessing of His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kyiv. Last year, Father Nicholas with two icons traveled from Sevastopol to Chernobyl: there is a legend that St. Apostle Andrew the First-Called. “Since Chernobyl affected every family in one way or another, people come to this image with great excitement and great faith,” says Father Nikolai.

“Father, how many parishioners do you have?” - “You know, sometimes it seems to us that three old people are very few. And sometimes we directly feel that we have hundreds of parishioners! After all, Chernobyl is a worldwide phenomenon!”

The staff of the Elias Church is small: a priest, a mother, two stokers and... its own, “regular” bell ringer - shift worker Nikolai. He comes from Kyiv not only during his shift, but also on free days. It is he who, on the night of April 26, at exactly 1.23, when the anniversary of the Holocaust is celebrated, rings the bell hanging in the church yard near the worship cross. Calls as many times as years have passed since the accident. And this ringing announces to the entire Zone: in Chernobyl there is a Church that the gates of hell will not overcome! The Divine Liturgy is celebrated in Chernobyl. And this means that in Chernobyl there is a place where Life defeated death. This means that Chernobyl has hope, Chernobyl has a future. No one knows whether normal life will return to Chernobyl; whether it is possible to clear the entire area of ​​radioactive stains is unknown. But there will be Orthodox life in Chernobyl, people will come to the Ilyinsky Church. As long as there is a temple, there will be life.

On the day of the anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a prayer service was held right on the territory of the station. A lot of people always come to such prayer services. This time, among the clergy was NS correspondent Deacon Fyodor Kotrelev

Epilogue

On the threshold of the Church of the Archangel Michael in the village. Krasno, three kilometers from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the dosimeter shows a 4-fold excess of the maximum permissible level of radiation. But as soon as you cross the threshold of the temple, the background radiation becomes normal - the same as in Moscow

Traveling around the Zone, we visited a village abandoned by residents three kilometers from the reactor. In the village there is a wooden church of the Archangel Michael. On the street, near the church, the radiation level exceeds the maximum permissible four times. In ordinary buildings, there is less radiation because radioactive dust does not get there from the street, but still the dosimeter readings are far from normal. Inside the temple, the dosimeter shows “normal”. Truly, there is simply no place for death in the Church!

We bring to your attention a few more photographs brought by our correspondents from Chernobyl, Pripyat and the surrounding area

In the Church of the Archangel Michael (Krasnoe village)

In Pripyat...

...the streets have long turned into groves

Where there are almost no people, animals thrive. They walk here, almost without fear of anyone

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