ArmInfo. The Russian Embassy in Armenia has awarded medals of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations to the Armenian citizens, who helped liquidate the consequences of emergency situations.
Russian Ambassador to Armenia Ivan Volynkin awarded the medals and said that Russia remembers the citizens who extended a helping hand during the Chernobyl disaster and provided their support in liquidation of the disaster consequences.
The Russian Ministry's medals were awarded to President of Chernobyl Union of Armenia Gevorg Vardanyan, Vice of the President of Chernobyl Union of Armenia Yerem Avagyan, members of the Coordination Council of Chernobyl Union of Armenia Khachatur Klijyan and Gevorg Melkonyan, Chairman of the Regional Branch of Chernobyl Union of Armenia Arthur Harutyunyan.
Ambassador Volynkin noted that he has never been to Chernobyl and when the disaster occurred in 1986 he was on a business trip in Yugoslavia, while his wife and children were returning from Belgrade to Moscow by train through Ukraine and the train was in Kiev on April 26. He stressed that the scale of the disaster was huge. He also pointed out the significance of the rescuers, servicemen and ordinary citizens, who arrived at the scene to help liquidate the consequences.
The Russian diplomat also stressed the need to be careful with the nuclear power engineering. "It is clear that it is impossible to do without nuclear power engineering, but it is necessary to handle the nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities very carefully," Volynkin said, noting that the damage was immense and the consequences harmed the health of the people living not only in that region, but also in neighboring Belarus.
For his part, Ambassador of Belarus to Armenia Igor Nazaruk told ArmInfo's correspondent that Armenian, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Tajiks, Russians and Ukrainians participated in the operations aimed at liquidating the consequences of that dreadful man-triggered disaster.
"My brother was also among those liquidating the disaster consequences, so I am well aware what it was. The radioactive fallout also affected the territory of my country Belarus. We are still fighting the consequences of the disaster. The state budget annually provides huge funds for rehabilitation of the population and nature affected by the disaster. We are very grateful to the international community that gave shelter to the children of Chernobyl. And it is very important that the Russian Embassy has assumed such a lofty mission," the diplomat said.
The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 in the No.4 Light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Pripyat, in what was then known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). During an impatient late night power-failure stress test, in which safety systems were deliberately turned off, a combination of inherent reactor design flaws together with the reactor operators arranging the core in a manner contrary to the checklist for the stress test, eventually resulted in uncontrolled reaction conditions that flashed water into steam generating a destructive steam explosion and a subsequent open- air graphite "fire", that "burned" for 9 days releasing plumes of radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere, spreading over much of the western USSR and Europe. The Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history in terms of cost and casualties. It is one of only two classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. On 15 December 2000, the plant was decommissioned.