Authorship of original image unknown
I remember this - even though I was never there. I was safely away, about 1,000 km to the East. I remember even considering visiting friends in Kiev in early May of 1986 and being told how crazy it was to even think of that.
I had yet to learn details of it. The coverup that the Soviet authorities engaged in, the First of May Parade that went on as planned in Kiev - because citizens' safety was clearly less important than the "optics", plus what if people start panicking? The heroic sacrifice of local first responders, the coverup that was reversed when it became clear that it was not sustainable, the confusion and incompetence of the authorities... I remember all of this.
The hustory now repeats itself, with the CCP's handling of the coronavirus crisis being compared - and justly so - to the Soviet authorities' coverup of Chernobyl. And if anything has changed since then, it would be the world growing more connected and the value of information, of honesty and transparency, growing that much larger.
And on this day we should honor the heroes and the victims of this disaster. And also we need to realize that regimes based on secrecy, repression and deceipt threaten us all as they do indeed threaten all of humanity.
Sources
Chernobyl: Facts About the Nuclear Disaster
Marc Lallanilla, Live Science, 20 June 2019