RUSSIA: Chernobyl accident "liquidators" honoured by Russia's President Vladimir Putin at a ceremony in the Kremlin

Record ID: 215992

  • Title: RUSSIA: Chernobyl accident "liquidators" honoured by Russia's President Vladimir Putin at a ceremony in the Kremlin
  • Date: 26th April 2006
  • Summary: CHERNOBYL "LIQUIDATORS" - THOSE WHO FOUGHT THE NUCLEAR FALLOUT AFTER THE ACCIDENT - SEATED CLOSE-UP OF MEDALS WORN BY A LIQUIDATOR
  • Embargoed: 11th May 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes,Energy
  • Reuters ID: LVACCL91AT1Z9BXHG79GPKFJ3LWU
  • Story Text: To mark the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear explosion, Russia's President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (April 25) handed out medals to the men who cleaned up the aftermath of the world's worst nuclear accident - and survived it.
    Known as "liquidators", tens of thousands of physicists, firefighters, medics and military personnel where flown to Chernobyl after the Number 4 reactor of the nuclear plant blew up on April 26 in 1986.
    Hundreds of staff toiled through the night after the blasts which struck just after one in the morning. Tens of thousands of soldiers, firefighters and engineers were dispatched and tonnes of material ferried in to build a shelter around the reactor.
    Many received huge radiation doses. Some died instantly. Others suffered agonising deaths in hospitals in Kiev or Moscow.
    There were no official records of the doses received by the hundreds of thousands of "liquidators" who buried contaminated machinery and cleaned up poisoned land, forests and rivers in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus.
    "Of course those who worked there never thought about themselves. They knew that the accident had to be stopped, whatever the costs. And your courage, the ability to concentrate under these extreme circumstances, and your great feeling of responsibility, saved a great number of people's lives. Today, I would like to present you with a state honour. We are giving it to you to show our recognition of your contributions and our gratefulness and respect. My congratulations," said Putin at the ceremony in the Kremlin.
    But many of the liquidators who are still alive despite having received vast doses of radiation -- some 600,000 people in all -- feel their sacrifice has been forgotten. Post-Soviet reforms have abolished or reduced the value of their pensions and benefits.
    Praskovya Britskaya, a member of the Moscow Union of Invalids of Chernobyl, took the opportunity to hand Putin an appeal from a group of survivors and family members to create a treatment centre.
    "We sent a draft proposal to the government and to you but we never received an answer," she told Putin at the ceremony.
    "And on behalf of these people, I am handing you this appeal personally, because today I have this chance," said Britskaya, drawing applause from the assembled veterans.
    Estimates of the number of deaths vary widely. The World Health Organisation puts at 9,000 the number of extra deaths, while the environmental group Greenpeace predicts an eventual death toll of 93,000.
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