nuclear-news

Chernobyl’s 40-year legacy: haunting photographs from the radiation zone

  The Chernobyl disaster of April 1986 was the beginning of the end of
the Soviet Union. The photographer Gerd Ludwig, who has visited the site 12
times, explores its legacy with Mark Galeotti.

As the German-American
photographer Gerd Ludwig’s extraordinary photographs on these pages show,
however, Chernobyl is neither gone nor forgotten. Ludwig first visited the
site in 1993 and returned 11 times over the decades, most recently last
month. The disaster remained a baneful presence through so many
developments: the failure of Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to reform the
USSR, the initially cordial but ultimately bad-tempered divorce of Russia
and Ukraine, and even the conduct of today’s war.

Chernobyl will remain
with us for a long time, not least because there are some distinct
parallels to the present day.

 Times 11th April 2026, https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/chernobyls-40-year-legacy-haunting-photographs-from-the-radiation-zone-k8bkhh79x

April 15, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized