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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Efrem Lukatsky

PHOTO ESSAY: AP photographer chronicles Chernobyl’s painful legacy of silence, sacrifice and danger

Ukraine Chernobyl Witnessing Disaster Photo Essay - (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Efrem Lukatsky, a Kyiv-based photographer for The Associated Press, was living in the city on April 26, 1986, when the explosion and fire struck the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, about a two-hour drive away. He has visited the plant and the “exclusion zone” around it dozens of times. He recalls the disaster that has haunted him and Ukraine for 40 years.

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