Since the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s reactor burst in 1986, many children in Belarus, just across the Ukrainian border, have been suffering from chronic radiation sickness. They’ve returned to school after yet another summer of being unable to escape contamination due to pandemic border restrictions
RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service correspondent Yevhen Solonyna ventured inside the concrete sarcophagus of Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 4 in 2018 for a rare and risky glimpse at the stricken power plant’s radioactive ruins
The Gomel region of southern Belarus – once a part of the former Soviet Union – suffered the biggest radioactive blow from the 1986 Chernobyl accident
The derelict Usolyekhimprom chemical plant contains tanks of chlorine, mercury, and other deadly substances spread across hundreds of hectares in Russia’s Irkutsk region. During a visit this July, the head of Russia’s environmental safety agency warned that the site poses a potential environmental disaster on the scale of Chernobyl