President Viktor Yushchenko has called on all Ukrainian citizens to light candles on the night of April 26 to commemorate the victims of the Chornobyl disaster that took place exactly 20 years ago. The total number of these victims is some 5,000,000 — people sustaining varying doses of radiation, suffering some material losses, who have or have not lived to see this day. The international conference “Chornobyl Disaster 20 Years Later: A View of the Future” ended its work in Kyiv yesterday.
The president, who attended the conference, said that above all it is necessary to tell the people the truth about the tragedy and its consequence. He stressed that it is very important to channel the international efforts in the eradication of all the main problems connects with the Chornobyl disaster. “Chornobyl must not become a black spot on the map,” declared Viktor Yushchenko and noted that the project of a new “sarcophagus” shelter may be launched in the middle of this summer at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station (ChAES).
Viktor Yushchenko further informed about the initiative of setting up an international research center dealing with “the scientific problem of the existence of Chornobyl... We are coming up with an international initiative concerning the establishment of an international research center that will cope with the scientific problem of the existence of Chornobyl; that will study the situation there, the logic of all processes; what challenges these processes may cast our way, considering that we may know nothing about them, about their scale and their consequences.”
As for the coordination of international efforts, all conference participants expressed their preparedness to take part in such cooperation. Ian Boag, the European Commission’s Ambassador to Ukraine, stated that the commission will continue with its projects aimed at aiding Ukraine in overcoming the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster in the nearest future. UN Assistant Secretary General Kalman Mizsei believes that the revival of Chornobyl is possible and stresses the need to start taking active measures in order to revive the affected regions. Among other things, it is stressed that, under the UN Development Program, over 200 organizations have been set up in 139 settlements in Ukraine with a population of 20,000. In two years these organizations have carried out over 100 projects, all aimed at solving priority problems for the local communities in the Chornobyl zone. Kalman Mizsei emphasized that even more important than these figures is the fact of the impact on the attitude of mankind toward the problems of Chornobyl and a transition to active measures to revive the region. He added that the UN Development Program acknowledges that the main problem for the residents of the affected regions is the absence of social and economic opportunities resulting from the resettlement and economic restrictions caused by the Chornobyl disaster, as well as the difficulties stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union. These are the greatest challenges facing the victims of Chornobyl in Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. In the two decades since the disaster Ukraine has spent some 15 billion dollars on measures to eradicate the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster, and before 2015, according to certain estimates cited by the president, such disbursements may total about 170 billion dollars.
