April 26, 2025, marks the 39th anniversary of one of the most large-scale man-made disasters in human history—the accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The accident was the result of a Moscow-directed experiment that ignored basic security protocols. Unacceptable manipulations with the reactor under direct instructions from Moscow led to an uncontrolled reaction, explosion, and meltdown.

This criminal negligence, as well as the Soviet attempt to conceal the truth, exposed millions of people to radiation. The Chornobyl disaster demonstrated that the Soviet system was broken and unable to ensure the basic safety of its citizens. The Chornobyl disaster, along with other factors, played a major role in the collapse of the USSR.

As a result of the explosion, over 145,000 square kilometers of land were contaminated with radionuclides. Around 5,000 settlements across Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian Federation were affected—2,218 of them in Ukraine alone, home to approximately 2.4 million people.

The impact of the disaster was felt beyond the region, with radioactive contamination detected in Belarus, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and the United Kingdom.

Nearly 5 million people suffered from the consequences of the accident.

The total (direct and indirect) economic losses incurred by Ukraine due to the Chornobyl disaster are estimated at tens of billions of US dollars.

Before the explosion at Chornobyl, the world had never witnessed a nuclear catastrophe of such magnitude. Nearly four decades later, its consequences continue to resonate.

Nuclear Terrorism—the Ongoing Threat at the Zaporizhzhia NPP

Attacks on civilian nuclear facilities in Ukraine have become an integral element of Russia’s military aggression. 

For the first time in human history, an aggressor state has forcibly seized nuclear power plants—Chornobyl (ChNPP) and Zaporizhzhia (ZNPP)—in blatant violation of international law.

Since the onset of the full-scale invasion, Russia has militarized the occupied Ukrainian nuclear power plants, using them for both military and political purposes. Numerous incidents at these facilities—including frequent shelling of nuclear infrastructure by Russian forces—pose a grave threat not only to the security of the European continent but to global safety as well.

One of the most recent incidents occurred during the night of February 13–14, 2025, when Russia launched an attack using a “Geran-2” combat drone on the New Safe Confinement structure at the Chornobyl NPP, which protects the destroyed Unit 4 reactor. The drone strike damaged both the outer and inner shells of the confinement structure (the NSC arch) and compromised the equipment of the main crane system.

In March 2025, the IAEA monitoring team reported multiple explosions at the Zaporizhzhia NPP. A diesel fuel tank that supplied electricity to the plant's emergency generators sustained damage at the temporarily occupied facility on March 26. This incident was a direct result of Russia’s replacement of licensed Ukrainian experts with unqualified personnel.

This marks yet another escalation of nuclear terrorism by Russia, which has repeatedly committed similar crimes during its ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. The world has witnessed countless instances of Russia deliberately destroying Ukrainian cities, killing children, and obliterating critical civilian infrastructure.