Russian pensioner Anna Venderenko says her village wrestles daily with the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, dreading the moment when a lifeline provided by the government in Moscow is slashed.
The 70-year-old lives in Starye Bobovichi, 180km northeast of the stricken nuclear plant in neighboring Ukraine.
On the night of April 26, 1986, a blast blew apart Chernobyl’s No. 4 reactor, spewing out a plume of radioactive gas and debris that, borne by the wind, contaminated homes and fields far away — including Venderenko’s village.
Now, as with hundreds of other villages and towns in the surrounding Bryansk region, local residents still battling with the disaster’s deadly legacy are facing an official ruling that will see support slashed.
“We have been abandoned,” Vendarenko said. “There are no more doctors or hospitals and soon there will be no more medication.”
In the wake of the disaster, Vendarenko’s village was officially classified as being inside a “forbidden zone,” but those living there refused to pack up and leave.
Now 30 years on, a presidential decree has officially ruled the radiation levels in the village have fallen, meaning that state funds that subsidize medical treatment and sanatorium stays for children are to be cut from July.
Experts and locals say that radiation levels in the Bryansk region have only slightly dipped since 1986 and the situation remains dire.
“This is more than 30 times the recommended level of radiation,” Greenpeace expert Rashid Alimov said during a media tour organized by the group, pointing a radiation dosimeter in Starye Bobovichi’s main square.
Of about 4,413 Russian towns and villages affected by Chernobyl, 383 will see their support cut later this year, while 558 are to lose it entirely.
“With this decree the authorities refuse to recognize that it takes 2,000 years — not 30 — for an area to be decontaminated,” said Anton Korsakov, a local biologist.
The corridors of a hospital in the nearby town Novozybkov are packed with children and elderly people waiting to be seen by one of the few doctors. In 1986 the town’s 30,000 inhabitants were not evacuated and surgeon Viktor Khanayev says that one-third of the hospital’s patients seek treatment for diseases and malformations caused or exacerbated by radiation.
“Many people can’t get treated,” he said. “Subsidized medication no longer works on them and they are forced to turn to expensive drugs.”
Novozybkov, long considered to have been contaminated by Chernobyl, in July will officially have the status of an “inhabitable” place.
“This is bad news,” Khanayev said. “People will now be forced to pay for medication that used to be free and the kids will no longer be sent to sanatoriums in the summer.”
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