Ukraine wants to include Chernobyl on the UNESCO list

Kyiv - Ukraine wants to apply for the inclusion of the Chernobyl power plant on the UNESCO World Heritage list. This was stated today by Ukrainian Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko during his visit to the power plant complex. "Many sites of the Chernobyl complex could be preserved so that humanity remembers what happened to us here," stated according to the Ukrinform agency Tkachenko at the site of the former nuclear disaster.

For the past fourteen years, Ukraine has commemorated the so-called Chernobyl liquidators on December 14, who fought the consequences of the accident and the subsequent explosion of the fourth reactor in April 1986 at the then-Soviet nuclear power plant. By December 14 of that year, the first protective sarcophagus had been built over the reactor's ruins, the DPA agency reported. Later, Ukraine constructed a new shelter over the destroyed reactor.

The Chernobyl disaster contaminated more than 200,000 square kilometers of European territory. The radioactive fallout primarily affected nearby Belarus, but the wind also carried it to Czechoslovakia. Thousands of people died as a result of radiation, and hundreds of thousands were forcibly evacuated by Soviet authorities.

The power plant and the nearby abandoned city of Pripyat have become tourist attractions in recent years, especially after the critically acclaimed HBO miniseries that focuses on the disaster. However, this year's measures against the spread of coronavirus have closed the Chernobyl area.

Ukraine currently has seven sites on the UNESCO World Heritage list, recalls the Ukrinform website. Among others, it includes the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Orthodox Monastery Complex in the Ukrainian capital and St. Sofia Cathedral, which is also located in Kyiv.