Even though he had one of the most challenging jobs in the world as the man in charge of the night-shift at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, nothing fazed Valentyn Heiko. Three-and-a-half decades after the disastrous meltdown in 1986, round-the-clock monitoring of the site in Ukraine continued for deadly radioactive fallout from its defunct reactors and facilities.
On March 1, 2022, Heiko wished staff via loudspeaker ‘peace of the spirit’. It was a brave and apt message in the circumstances – and a defiant one. Because the corridors around the control rooms of the closed – but still lethally contaminated – nuclear compound were being patrolled by machine-gun toting, trigger-happy Russian soldiers.
Following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine six days previously, they had burst their way in and taken over the plant.
Back in 1986, a massive explosion in one of Chernobyl’s reactors had blasted about 300 tons of radioactive graphite into the air, sparking a worldwide emergency.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later, the area became part of an independent Ukraine, whose nuclear specialists have since been undertaking the monumental task of containing all possible contamination.
The danger was far from over. Indeed, just a year before, engineers had detected worrying signs that fission had restarted in one of the supposedly defunct reactors, threatening another accident.
After Putin’s decision to invade, the quickest route to the capital, Kyiv, was to go through the wasteland of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. One of the Russian leader’s excuses for invading was his claim that Ukraine was secretly building a nuclear bomb there and enriching irradiated materials to turn into weapons of mass destruction.
On February 24, 2022 – the first day of the invasion – a column of armoured vehicles broke through the security perimeter and hauled down the Ukrainian flag.
Inside the administrative building, soldiers of the Ukrainian National Guard unit took up positions, ready to fight. Two Russian officers, general Sergei Burakov and colonel Andrei Frolenkov, announced that they were assuming control of the plant.
Hopelessly outnumbered, the 170 Ukrainian guards put down their weapons and became prisoners of war, while the plant’s 50 engineers and operators and 80 firefighters found themselves under occupation.
Suddenly, they were facing a life-or-death decision – stay or go. The Russians had told them they could leave – but what would happen if there was no one to monitor the radiation and ensure its safety?
They knew they had to stay. So, for weeks, they worked at gunpoint with no change of clothing, medication or hygienic supplies.
In effect, these men and women were hostages, stuck on an endless shift, uncertain if they would ever see their loved ones or their homes again. But the choices they made saved the world from another Chernobyl disaster.
Their foreman, Heiko, had to cooperate with the Russians but was determined to do so on his own terms. He came up with a daring plan – he would use his technical know-how to frighten them.
Calmly, he introduced himself to his captors: ‘I am the shift supervisor and represent the state of Ukraine.’ After Heiko had confirmed the identity of his Russian ‘guests’, Burakov and Frolenkov declared that the Chernobyl plant was now behind Russian lines.
Though a captive, Heiko laid down his ground rules. He told them that no matter how powerful the Russian military, at the nuclear plant they were not in charge.
They didn’t understand how the plant worked and, as such, any interference would risk nuclear disaster – and all their lives.
As one observer noted: ‘He made it clear to the occupiers that either they would behave decently or be up s**t creek. That is why they did not touch any workers.’
They agreed his terms. Operational control would remain in the hands of the staff, who would be free to move around as necessary and without interference.
The Russian soldiers were allowed in the administration building but would stay away from the obsolete reactor and spent nuclear fuel facilities, and arms would be prohibited in operational areas.
The Russians accepted that they had captured a dangerous site and, to survive, they would have to follow Heiko’s recommendations.
He even bamboozled them into believing that three reactors were still operational when, in fact, the last one had shut in 2000.
As the days of occupation continued, Heiko turned the screws even more, particularly after Putin hinted at the use of nuclear weapons. He told his captors that if the Kremlin used nuclear weapons against Ukraine, he would sabotage the plant and unleash Chernobyl radiation to kill the Russians.
‘I promise you,’ he spelt out, ‘that you will slowly and certainly die here, together with me. I have enough knowledge and skill to ensure that you will remain here with us forever.’
Despite Heiko’s master manipulation, his fellow Ukrainian staff were totally unprepared for the situation they found themselves in. They lived and worked in appalling conditions, jammed into tiny spaces, four to a room.
The work was unrelenting. Under normal circumstances, they were to take a 24-hour rest after a 12-hour shift, but now a new shift began immediately after the previous one. ‘We worked almost round the clock, resting for just a few hours,’ remembered engineer Liudmyla Kozak. ‘We were walking around like ghosts.’
Exhausted and homesick, they felt hunted as they were continuously under surveillance. Some succumbed to depression or panic, feeling ‘trapped, stressed and desperate for relief’ in the words of an article in the Wall Street Journal.
Keeping up morale was no easy task, but small acts of defiance helped keep them going. For example, Kozak was instructed to always wear something white to identify herself and avoid being shot in the dark by mistake. She put on a white medical cap which she embroidered with the Ukrainian coat of arms and national flag.
There was one solace throughout. At 9am each morning, the Ukrainian national anthem blared through the loudspeaker – a concession that Heiko had remarkably wrung from the Russians. The workers stood, palms pressed to their chests, before returning to work. Across the world, fears were widespread that Russia had turned the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster into an instrument of war. In Chernobyl, events were moving on alarmingly.
Troops started searching for those ‘nuclear bomb’ laboratories imagined by Putin. All the plant’s buildings were checked, with no result. Then, Russian officers considered opening up the mounds of earth erected over the sites where radioactive debris had been buried after the meltdown in 1986.
Valerii Semenov, a senior engineer, told them they were mad as exposing radioactive debris would put everyone in danger of contamination. Faced with the prospect of digging their own radioactive graves, the Russians desisted. Instead, they fortified their military position by digging trenches.
When Semenov discovered sandbags used to protect firing positions had been sourced from contaminated earth, he exploded: ‘You’re bringing in radioactive dirt from outside. Are you out of your mind?’ He also found trenches dug in some of the most contaminated areas – including one where, in 1986, radiation had discoloured the pine trees ginger brown.
The fact was that morale among the 1,000 Russian troops occupying the plant was very low. They drank heavily, with up to half of their rubbish consisting of empty bottles. Fights were frequent. So was looting as they combed the offices for alcohol.
Semenov recalled that many of the Russians were not prepared for a long war. They had expected it to be over within days.
What happened next was arguably the most heroic episode of the whole Chernobyl saga. It was increasingly obvious that staff at the plant had had enough. Even the Russian commanders agreed, realising the exhaustion and resentment of the Ukrainian personnel might lead to an accident that would jeopardise the lives of the occupiers.
They proposed a change of shift, allowing those on duty ever since the occupation to go home, to be replaced by a crew from the nearby town of Slavutych. But this depended on finding experienced staff prepared to risk their freedom – and perhaps their lives – by going into Russian captivity.
Amazingly, there was no lack of volunteers. Forty-six men and women came forward, with two senior men, Volodymyr Falshovnyk and Serhii Makliuk, offering to lead the new shift. Makliuk recalled: ‘We were worried because we were going into the unknown. But our anxiety was less about how we would work at the plant and more what would happen to the families we were leaving behind.’
It was a complicated process getting the original shift out and the new one in, not least because it had to be done in stages so there would always be some staff left to monitor the place. On the 26th day of what had begun as a 12-hour shift, 50 workers were on their way home – 16 engineers and mechanics stayed, including Semenov.
The two shifts met on the side of a river and the exchange took place. ‘We had just seconds to embrace and shed tears,’ recalled a woman from Heiko’s shift.
Heiko considered the volunteers true heroes. ‘They were going into the unknown,’ he said later. ‘No one knew how it would end or how long they would be there.’
Heiko and his crew had spent 600 hours on duty at the occupied nuclear power plant. It was anyone’s guess how long the replacement shift would be there.
When they arrived, the Russians told the new plant leaders Falshovnyk and Makliuk: ‘Nothing here is your Ukrainian property. We’ll take what we need.’
And they were true to their word as Russian troops looted anything and everything they could get their hands on. Half the administration building was smashed up, a laboratory was ransacked, computers destroyed, hard drives ripped off, equipment stolen.
One reason the looting worsened was that the Russian army was on the retreat from Kyiv. On March 30, the Russians took down a 35-metre high communications antenna they had installed near the administration building.
Perhaps they’re leaving us, Falshovnyk mused. His words turned out to be prophetic.
The next day, the Russians locked Falshovnyk in his office and presented him with a document.
It was titled ‘Act of Acceptance and Transfer of Protection of the Chernobyl Atomic Station’ and stated the troops of the Russian Guard had provided ‘reliable protection and defence’ of the Chernobyl nuclear station, which they were now transferring back to the Ukrainians. Men carrying automatic rifles demanded that he and Makliuk sign the document or they would be arrested.
They were being asked to confirm that the Russians had behaved well but, faced with the threat of arrest, they signed.
And then, the Russians were gone. A security camera captured an image of one soldier leaving with a Russian flag trailing behind him like the low-hanging tail of a defeated dog.
The next day, April 3, those inside the plant were astonished to hear a voice on a loudspeaker coming from beyond the perimeter. ‘Good morning,’ it said. ‘We are the armed forces of Ukraine. Please let us in.’
And then a Ukrainian armoured personnel carrier and two trucks rolled into Chernobyl.
It really was over.
The Chernobyl staff got to work cleaning up. The extent of the Russian troops’ damage and looting was astounding.
Missing were some 1,500 meters for checking radiation levels, 698 computers and 344 vehicles, amounting to a total value of $135million (£102million).
The only thing the retreating Russian soldiers left behind was an increased level of radiation – up more than 40 times, almost certainly the result of digging trenches in the highly contaminated Red Forest.
There were unverified reports from inside Russia that one soldier had died, 26 had been admitted to hospital and 73 sent for treatment after exposure to radiation in the Chernobyl zone.
The Ukrainians believed that one reason they departed in such a hurry was in panic that so many of them were falling sick.
The Russian troops may have left Chernobyl, but there was every chance that Chernobyl would never leave them. And the threat of nuclear disaster remains very real elsewhere in Ukraine.
Zaporizhia, a nuclear plant in southern Ukraine and the largest power facility in Europe, remains under Russian control.
And last Saturday, following a drone strike nearby, the UN’s nuclear watchdog warned that the safety situation at the plant was ‘deteriorating’.
At Chernobyl, the brave actions of the plant workers prevented nuclear disaster, but we cannot always count on individual heroism to produce such endings in the future.
Unless the world acts to protect nuclear reactors from attack during wartime, instead of being a solution to the problem of climate change, nuclear power will solidify its reputation as the destroyer of worlds.
Adapted from Chernobyl Roulette by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, £25), out on September 3. © Serhii Plokhy 2024. To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 06/09/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) see tomailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937