Serhii Plokhy talks to Francis Dearnley

Prize-winning Harvard historian Professor Serhii Plokhy tells the story of the Russian occupation of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 2022 and how the plant workers fought to prevent a nuclear disaster.

Chernobyl was the site of a nuclear accident four decades earlier and Russia’s occupation during the early days of its invasion of Ukraine was widely seen as reckless. Plokhy tells the story from different perspectives including Valentyn Heiko, the foreman who was also there for the clean-up in 1986, the workers who celebrated International Women’s Day, the Russian officers who knew nothing about nuclear reactors and stalkers caught in the middle. Plokhy raises the alarm about the dangers posed by nuclear sites in such uncertain times.

Plokhy is professor of history at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. He is author of several books including Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, and The Russo-Ukrainian War; Nuclear Folly; and Atoms and Ashes. Here he talks to Francis Dearnley, assistant comment editor at The Telegraph and one of the presenters of its daily award-winning podcast Ukraine: The Latest.