‘We could hear the roof collapsing’: how Russian missiles devastated Kyiv’s cultural sites

Rescue workers clean up the debris inside the National Chornobyl Museum. The text on the wall reads: ‘Lost worlds’. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian

For four years, Vitalina Martynovska and her team had been working on a complete transformation of Kyiv’s National Chornobyl Museum.

The new sleek displays were designed to tell a fresh story about the reactor explosion of 26 April 1986 – the most serious nuclear accident in history, a factor that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and an event that continues to shape Ukraine’s identity today.