Widow of Chernobyl disaster’s first victim killed in Russian drone strike on Kyiv

The widow of the first person to die in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster died in Kyiv on Saturday after the building she lived in was struck by Russian drones on Friday, leaving her with critical injuries and severe burns.

The death of 73-year-old Nataliia Khodemchuk, whose husband Valeriy Khodemchuk was the first victim of the disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the Kyiv region city of Pripyat, brings the death toll from Friday’s Russian airstrikes on Kyiv up to seven.

Khodemchuk’s husband was a pump operator who was working at the plant on 26 April 1986 when reactor 4 exploded, likely killing him instantly. He was the first confirmed victim of the disaster and his body remains entombed inside the sarcophagus of reactor 4 to this day.

Characters based on both Khodemchuks featured in Chernobyl, the HBO dramatisation of the worst nuclear accident in history, in which Valeriy was played by Kieran O’Brien.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid tribute to both Khodemchuks in a post on X on Saturday, describing how Valeriy had been “the only plant worker whose body was never recovered from the rubble” of Chernobyl and noting that nearly four decades later, “Nataliia was killed in a new tragedy caused once again by the Kremlin.”

“Ukrainians who survived Chornobyl, who helped rebuild the country after that disaster, are once again facing danger — the terror of an aggressor state,” Zelensky added.