Chornobyl disaster survivor recalls life as an evacuee: 'We are not coming back'

A survivor of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster reflects on life as an internally displaced person. Residents of over a hundred villages and two cities — Chornobyl and Prypiat — were evacuated following the catastrophe, long before the war that began in 2014 forced millions more Ukrainians from their homes.

Residents of more than one hundred villages and the cities of Chornobyl and Prypiat in Ukraine had already learned what it meant to live as internally displaced people long before the war that began in 2014. A survivor of the 1986 nuclear disaster has shared memories of that painful chapter — a story of loss, displacement, and a life never fully rebuilt.

A disaster that never truly ended

When reactor No. 4 at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded in April 1986, tens of thousands of people were forced to abandon their homes within days. Many left believing the evacuation would be temporary. It was not. Entire communities were erased from the map, and the phrase "we are not coming back" became a defining truth for an entire generation of evacuees.

For those who lived through it, the experience of displacement was not merely physical. It meant the loss of community, identity, and a way of life that could never be fully restored. Streets, neighbourhoods, and friendships were left behind in what is now known as the Exclusion Zone.

A generation of experience that Ukraine now lives again

Decades later, the survivors of Chornobyl find themselves in an eerily familiar landscape. Since 2014, and especially following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, millions of Ukrainians have been forced from their homes — repeating a pattern the Chornobyl generation knows all too well.

For this reason, the memories of Chornobyl evacuees carry a weight that extends far beyond personal history. Their testimonies serve as a grim reminder of how displacement, once forced upon a person, rarely ends cleanly — and how the echoes of a single catastrophe can shape the lives of generations to come.