You're reading: Poroshenko’s address on Chornobyl Remembrance Day

Editor's note: The following is the English translation of the address by President Petro Poroshenko, published in Ukrainian on his website on April 26, the anniversary of the Chornobyl tragedy.


Dear compatriots!

Twenty years have passed since that spring day when the terrible tragedy took place at Chornobyl nuclear plant.

The “peaceful atom” had changed peoples’ lives in a minute, crossed international borders, transformed a part of the amazing Ukrainian Polissya into an exclusion zone, isolated from world for many years.

Chornobyl is above all a human tragedy, an epicenter of which is on our land.

With heavy hearts we are commemorating the ones gone into everlasting peace fighting with the nuclear cataclysm. May the memory of you live forever.

The burden of the consequences of the catastrophe is on the shoulders of our people.

In these difficult times, the international support to overcome the consequences of Chornobyl especially important for Ukraine. We hope that together with the aid-providing countries we will construct a reliable and safe shelter over the destroyed reactor to protect Ukrainians and other nations from the echo of the tragedy of 1986.

At the end of last century we closed Chornobyl nuclear power plant, but this page of our history remains opened.

Globalization of the environmental issues raises the question of what planet we will leave to the future generations. I’m convinced that the international community must consolidate their efforts to secure the future of humanity.

Dear Ukrainians!

The establishment and development of independent Ukraine is inseparably connected to the history of the fighting with the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster, the stories of people affected by this terrible disaster.

Let this day always unite all Ukrainians in our joint memory, in our good intentions and actions in a struggle for a better life in the family of European nations.

I wish you peace, good health, happiness and prosperity.

Glory to Ukraine!

Petro Poroshenko