PERSONAL: Chornobyl diver's wife faces new trauma after Russian drone strike on their home

Valentyna Ananenko lives on the ninth floor of a Kyiv apartment block that was struck by a Russian Shahed drone in November 2025.

She cares full time for her husband Oleksii, one of the three Chornobyl plant workers credited with preventing a second explosion in early May 1986.

The drone attack left one apartment burned out and filled neighbouring flats with smoke that spread rapidly through ventilation shafts, Valentyna said.

Five months later, the charred apartment of her neighbour Nataliia Khodemchuk remains uncleaned.

Khodemchuk, 73, the widow of Valerii Khodemchuk - the first victim of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster - was hospitalised with extensive burns and died the following day, Ukrainian officials said at the time.

Valentyna said the experience left a permanent psychological mark, adding that watching war on television was very different from living through it.

She said repeated air raid alerts revived memories of the drone strike and of a recent episode when her husband went missing after becoming disoriented by dementia, making it increasingly difficult for her to feel safe again.

On May 6, 1986, Chornobyl nuclear power plant engineer Oleksii, then 26 years old, was ordered to descend beneath the destroyed fourth reactor with two colleagues to drain water from a suppression pool to avert a possible second explosion.

According to his wife's account, they navigated areas of high radiation with basic protective gear, opened the valves by hand and confirmed success by hearing the water drain away.

The team became known as the 'Chornobyl Divers' because they waded through flooded basement chambers in chest-deep, steam-contaminated water beneath the reactor.

Valentyna said the men then returned to their posts and completed their shifts, with her husband later describing the mission as a routine work task rather than a heroic act.

He was dismissed from work at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in 1989 for health reasons and was awarded the Soviet Order for Personal Courage that year, decades before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy honoured him with the title Hero of Ukraine in 2019.

Ananenko's residential building is home to many former Chornobyl workers and their families, forming a close‑knit community shaped by shared loss, Valentyna explained.

Walking through the nearby Chornobyl Heroes Memorial, she noted that past and present disasters had collided in her life.

Explosions can be felt, she added, but radiation cannot as its invisible harm leaves traces on people's health that never fully fade.

Production: Anna Voitenko, Felix Hoske/Reuters