Vasily Ignatenko

Ignatenko was among the firefighters that got closest to the exposed reactor core as they attempted to extinguish fires on the roof reactor 3 and around the ventilation shaft. He soon began to display symptoms of a very serious acute radiation syndrome (ARS).[1] After a brief stay at the Pripyat city hospital, on the same day of the accident he was transported to Hospital Number Six in Moscow, a state-run structure specialized in radiobiology and radiation accidents. He was joined by his wife, Lyudmilla, who stayed by his side and witnessed the painful agony of her husband and other affected victims.[2] He died from ARS complications two weeks after the accident, on 13 May 1986.[3]

Ignatenko was laid to rest at the Mitinskoe Cemetery in Moscow along with others—first responders and plant personnel—who died in the Chernobyl disaster. Like the other ARS casualties, he was allegedly buried in a sealed zinc coffin and in a concrete shielding, due to fears that radioactivity could leak out and contaminate the grounds.[4] His widow Lyudmilla was seven months pregnant at the time. She went into labor two months later, as she was visiting her husband's grave at the Moscow cemetery, and she gave birth to a daughter, whom Vasily had wished to name Natashenka. The baby girl died just four hours after she was born, due to congenital heart malformations and cirrhosis of the liver.[5][6]

Ignatenko's statue in Brahin, Belarus, his hometown

In the 2019, HBO miniseries Chernobyl, which draws on the stories of Ignatenko and others involved in the disaster, a character states that the death of Vasily and Lyudmilla's baby was caused by the fetus absorbing radiation while Lyudmilla cared for her husband in the hospital. In a 1996 interview, Lyudmilla said that her baby "took the whole radioactive shock [...] She was like a lightning rod for it".[7] Ukrainian medical responder Alla Shapiro, in a 2019 interview with Vanity Fair, said such beliefs were false, and that once Ignatenko was showered and out of his contaminated clothing, he was not dangerous to others.[8] Robert Peter Gale, an American hematologist who was directly involved in the treatment of the Chernobyl ARS victims, writes that victims were not radioactive themselves and therefore did not pose a danger of radiation exposure to others.[9]

In 2006, Ignatenko was posthumously awarded the title of the Hero of Ukraine, the highest national award in the country.[10] Ignatenko's story was told by his widow in Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. It became an inspiration for the related storyline in the 2019 miniseries. Vasily Ignatenko is portrayed by the British actor Adam Nagaitis, and his wife by the Irish actress Jessie Buckley.[11] His wife, Lyudmilla Ignatenko describes the ordeals and the effects of the radiation. In order for her to see her husband, she has to bribe one of the hospital workers. The radiation on her husband was so bad she was not allowed near her husband. She later said, "He started to change—every day I met a brand-new person. The burns started to come to the surface. In his mouth, on his tongue, his cheeks—at first there were little lesions, and then they grew. It came off in layers—as white film ... the colour of his face ... his body ... blue, red, grey-brown [...] It's impossible to describe!"[12]

• Hero of Ukraine (2006)

• Individual involvement in the Chernobyl disaster

• Alexievich, Svetlana (2005). Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. Translated by Gessen, Keith. Normal, Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press. ISBN 1-56478-401-0. OL 17152904M.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• "Extract: Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich". The Guardian. 25 April 2005.