WHEN maverick Ukrainian entrepreneur Vadym Minziuk’s life was destroyed in the 2014 Russian invasion he had no choice but to flee.
He moved his family to the only place he could afford to start again – a one-horse town in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Vadym had big dreams of transforming the fortunes of the town of Dytyatky, despite its history of being ravaged by the fallout from the 1986 nuclear disaster and still maintaining high levels of radiation. He envisioned turning Dytyatky into one of Ukraine’s premier tourist destinations.
Unfortunately for Vadym his big-city ways and newfangled ideas set him at odds with the townsfolk, led by the formidable Mayor Svitlana.
But with a full-scale Russian invasion threatening the nation, a new film tells how Vadym and his neighbours had to unite to survive.
Back in Donbas, in the East of the country, Vadym and his family had a large home, two apartments, a second house and a factory but it was all destroyed in one rocket strike. They had to start from scratch with nothing.
“Leaving home is never easy, especially when you have to run,” he says. “But my friend suggested a place where after an accident land was very cheap.
“We found land to settle. Now the land near Chernobyl is our home.”
He adds: “My friends and family often ask ‘’What’s with the radiation?’ I tell them not to worry.”
Vadym is so at home here, he even walks his dog along the high wire fence that marks out the beginning of the exclusion zone, every day.
It’s his favourite place to enjoy the birdsong and the quiet of the forest.
“It’s like living in the north of Finland or Alaska,” says Vadym. “This area has the lowest population density of anywhere in Ukraine – only two people per square kilometre.”
In 1986 the world watched in horror as the worst nuclear disaster of the 20th century unfolded.
Since then, the radioactive site has remained frozen in time, and off limits to the public, after a reactor at the plant exploded.
The resulting fallout created a crisis for those living for miles around.
The residents of Dytyatky were evacuated, but as it was just outside the Chernobyl exclusion zone they were allowed to return and rebuild their lives.
Angry neighbours
Many chose to stay away, and newcomers like Vadym were a rarity and viewed with suspicion.
Undeterred, Vadym built a new factory to take waste from dumpsters, melt it down and extract metal from it.
But the smoke and waste from his new operation didn’t make him popular with locals.
Village elder Olga lived through the 1986 disaster and says: “Firstly the Chernobyl accident and now Vadym stinks the place out.”
Vadym knows no-one likes him here. If he came to our village fair we wouldn’t be able to save him from people. They would beat him.
Serhii
But Vadym was determined to win them over.
He said: “The fact is the village has always been very closed off, they are very wary of strangers. Every fourth house in the village is abandoned. People usually move out of the village and we are probably the first ones to move in.
“Next door to our factory is a sawmill. The boss looks at us, we’re all dirty and he says ‘Only people from Donbas could work like this.’”
Sawmill owner Serhii says: “Go look at the people who work there. They are black from the soot. Sometimes I send my worker to check they are still alive over there.
“Vadym knows no one likes him here. If he came to our village fair we wouldn’t be able to save him from people. They would beat him.”
Revenge plan
Serhii, who is married to the town’s Mayor, Svitlana, says: “I love and respect everyone here, they’re like family to me. But sometimes we have disagreements.”
But Vadym adds: “They run the place like feudal lords. As soon as I arrived I became a bone in their throat.
“The mayor of the village was causing problems, ordering raids on my factory. They’re trying to get rid of me but they are not succeeding.”
So after being accused of not paying taxes and temporarily forced to close his factory, Vadym decided to take revenge and run for mayor himself.
Do you think tourists will come here? With our radiation? He’s just a fantasist.
Chernobyl local
“Some people here have a Soviet mentality and I think we should change that,” he says. “I dream that in 10 years this area will become a super-duper touristic area run entirely on alternative green energy sources.
“We could have an airport here for all those tourists coming from Kyiv.”
But some of the locals weren’t so sure about his plans to turn the town into a tourist hotspot.
“Do you think tourists will come here,” laughed one woman. “With our radiation? He’s just a fantasist. He’s never lived in a village like this. People here are not used to ideas like this. They don’t understand.”
Russia-Ukraine war
But in 2021 tensions started to grow between Russia and Ukraine, with Russian troops massing on the border including near Chernobyl.
When war broke out in 2022, Vadym decided to go to Kyiv to fight for his country.
But after four months of fighting on the frontline, he was injured and forced to return home.
When the Russians invaded their village, Vadym and his wife Elena were out of town, meaning their daughter Dasha was on her own.
Dasha recalls: “It was scary at night. People kept telling me the Russians would come and shoot us. They will rape you.”
And unlikely people came to her rescue – the family’s arch-enemies Serhii and Svitlana.
Vadym says: “Serhii came to our Dasha and said, ‘Dasha no more nights alone.’
“Dasha lived with Svitlana and Serhii throughout the occupation. When I came here I had a tense relationship with Serhii and Svitlana. But the war changed everything.
“They kept my daughter safe when we were separated. It’s time to forget all the stuff from the past.
What happened at Chernobyl?
THE nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl claimed 31 lives as well as leaving thousands of people and animals exposed to potentially fatal radiation.
When an alarm bellowed out at the nuclear plant on April 26, 1986, workers looked on in horror as the control panels signaled a major meltdown in the number four reactor.
The safety switches had been switched off in the early hours to test the turbine but the reactor overheated and generated a blast – the equivalent of 500 nuclear bombs.
The reactor’s roof was blown off and a plume of radioactive material was blasted into the atmosphere.
As air was sucked into the shattered reactor, it ignited flammable carbon monoxide gas
causing a fire which burned for nine days.
The catastrophe released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Soviet authorities waited 24 hours before evacuating the nearby town of Pripyat – giving the 50,000 residents just three hours to leave their homes.
After the accident traces of radioactive deposits were found in Belarus where poisonous rain damaged plants and caused animal mutations.
But the devastating impact was also felt in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, France and the UK.
An 18-mile radius known as the “Exclusion Zone” was set up around the reactor following the disaster.
“When I first came here it was strange. People treated me like a foreigner who had come to earn money.
“But now they’ve experienced war like I did, now they say ‘he’s one of us.’”
Serhii adds: “He went to war. He wasn’t afraid. So now if his factory smokes once or twice a month, let it smoke.”
Chernobyl now
While residents in Dytyatky are building new lives and new allegiances, life in Chernobyl is very different.
Experts warn that the surrounding land is so toxic that the radiation will not decay for thousands of years.
But despite the obvious danger to life, Chernobyl and the towns around it aren’t empty.
After the disaster about 1,200 people returned to their homes, disregarding the authorities and the potential risks to their health.
Around 130 to 150 residents remain in the exclusion zone, mostly men and women over 50, who had lived through the harrowing years of Soviet rule and Nazi invasion. They clung to their ancestry and roots and did not want to be displaced.
Yet the area is a virtual ghost town, with hundreds of abandoned buildings.
The houses may be crumbling but they are like a 1980s time capsule providing a glimpse into people’s lives before they were changed forever.
A Ferris wheel stands still in the abandoned city of Pripyat as a reminder of days gone by when families would have fun there.
Rusting cribs still sit in the derelict hospital’s maternity ward decades after the disaster, and schoolbooks still line the shelves of hastily evacuated schools.
And much like Vadym predicted, tourists are starting to return on organised tours, curious to see Chernobyl now. It is estimated that over 40,000 have made the pilgrimage there in the last decade.
But while the landscape is recovering, forests are growing again and animals such as moose, wild boar, wolves and horses are thriving, it is unlikely that human life will ever return to normal in the zone.
Chernobyl, My Promised Land is on Sky Documentaries.
