Widow of Chernobyl’s First Recorded Victim Killed in Kyiv Shahed Drone Strike

Widow of Chernobyl’s first recorded victim dies after drone strike in Kyiv

Nataliia Khodemchuk, 73, the widow of Valery Khodemchuk — widely reported as the first recorded fatality of the 1986 Chernobyl Reactor 4 explosion — died after an Iranian-designed Shahed drone struck the apartment block where she lived in the Troieshchyna district of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said she sustained severe burns and later died in hospital; her death was reported as one of seven fatalities from the overnight barrage.

The building is a housing block reserved for former Chernobyl workers and their families. The same strike also hit the home of Oleksiy Ananenko, one of the Chernobyl engineers known as the so-called “Suicide Squad” who entered the reactor’s lower levels to avert a larger catastrophe. Mr Ananenko was not injured.

"Nearly four decades [after the disaster], Nataliia was killed in a new tragedy caused once again by the Kremlin,"

President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X that survivors of Chernobyl and those who helped rebuild after the disaster now face renewed danger from Russian aggression.

Valery Khodemchuk, a 35-year-old circulating-pump operator, is believed to have been either instantly vaporised in the April 26, 1986 blast or crushed by the collapsing structure. He is commonly regarded as the first person to die in the immediate aftermath; about 31 people died in the seconds to weeks following the explosion, while many more so-called "liquidators" later suffered illness and death linked to radiation exposure.

The remains of Valery Khodemchuk are entombed within the original sarcophagus that sealed the destroyed reactor. That concrete-and-steel structure, weighing roughly 300,000 tonnes, was built in around 206 days with labour from some 600,000 workers across the Soviet Union. A plaque inside the sarcophagus commemorates him, and a cenotaph stands at Moscow’s Mitinskoe Cemetery — a site his widow reportedly visited annually for more than 20 years.

Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich recorded accounts from workers who helped build the sarcophagus in her oral history Voices from Chernobyl. One remembered: "We poured the sarcophagus. It was a giant grave for one person, the senior operator, Valery Khodemchuk... It’s a 20th-century pyramid."

The damaged reactor is now enclosed by the New Safe Confinement, a later steel structure designed to limit further radioactive release. In February this year, Russian drone strikes reportedly punched a hole in the New Safe Confinement’s outer roof and triggered a smouldering fire that burned for weeks, leaving the sarcophagus exposed and renewing international concerns about nuclear safety.

During Russia’s five-week occupation of the plant and exclusion zone in 2022, Ukrainian officials said military activity stirred up radioactive dust, raising fears of new contamination hotspots. Kyiv has repeatedly accused Moscow of endangering nuclear facilities, including the Zaporizhzhia plant, and of risking nuclear safety across Ukraine and Europe.

Valery Khodemchuk was portrayed by actor Kieran O’Brien in HBO’s 2019 miniseries Chernobyl. The death of his widow underscores the persistent human cost of the disaster and the renewed risks posed by attacks near nuclear sites.