CIS marks Chernobyl's 25th anniversary

25 years ago, on 26 April 1986, an explosion rocked Reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant located in Ukraine, in close vicinity to the Belarusian border. An estimated 46,500 square kilometers of the Belarusian territory (20% of the Belarusian population) and 19 Russian regions (almost 60,000 square kilometers, 2.6 million people) were exposed to radioactive contamination. The polluted area of Ukraine totaled 50,000 square kilometers in 12 oblasts.

The accident took many human lives and ruined health of many others.

Belarus commemorates Chernobyl anniversaries. An annual requiem meeting is held in the central square of the town of Bragin that lies 45 kilometers away from the reactor.

Monuments and memorable plaques have been erected across Belarus to commemorate the villages that were abandoned after the accident.

St. Michael Church in Gomel has been turned into a monument to Chernobyl victims. The church, a specimen of wooden architecture of the 19th century, was relocated from the resettled village of Vylevo, Dobrush District, and restored back in Gomel by teachers and students of the Gomel Engineering Institute of the Emergencies Ministry.

Many places in Minsk are connected with the memory of the Chernobyl disaster. For example, in Minsk there are streets named after the brave firefighter Vasily Ignatenko and helicopter pilot Vasily Vodolazhsky. A memorial to the Victims of Chernobyl was erected in the park of Friendship between Peoples.

The Chernobyl Church in honor of the Icon of the Mother of God in Minsk was built in the 1990s on the money raised by the Chernobyl civil organizations and ordinary people. One more temple to commemorate the Chernobyl victims was constructed in Pritytskogo Street. All Saints Memorial Church has a crypt, the door of which is decorated with six bas-reliefs "Tears of Belarus". Among them there is Chernobyl, the never-ending pain of Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian people, BelTA reports.

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