Moldovan president in Chernobyl says contempt for human life did not disappear from Kremlin

President Maia Sandu in Chernobyl today took part in the ceremony marking four decades since the most severe nuclear catastrophe in history, alongside President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and representatives of the international community. The event paid tribute to the liquidators, including the 3,500 Moldovans who were sent to the disaster zone without sufficient protection and without knowing the full truth about the danger to which they were exposed.

Referring to the catastrophe, President Maia Sandu said it had been the consequence of a regime that placed its own reputation above people’s lives — “a regime that kept people in the dark while a reactor was burning, because those in power believed they had the right to decide what those without power were allowed to know.”

That contempt, however, does not belong only to the past. “The same disregard for human life that defined the Soviet response is reflected today in Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities, in the occupation of nuclear power plants, in the war that Moscow even refuses to call a war,” the Moldovan president noted.

When a Russian drone hit the New Safe Confinement structure last year — the arch built over the contaminated reactor — the message, in the opinion of the head of state, was deliberate: what the world builds together can be targeted and destroyed. In the context, the Moldovan president called on the international community to renew its commitments to nuclear safety.

In conclusion, the head of state stressed that the lessons of this place were more relevant than ever: a state that treats its citizens as expendable pays a price that will also be borne by future generations; nuclear safety is a permanent responsibility; and state-sponsored lies protect no one — on the contrary, they kill.

Moldova chooses a different path, the president emphasized. “We want to build a society that tells the truth to its citizens, that does not send anyone into danger without protection and without honesty, in which the state is truly worthy of the trust it is given,” Maia Sandu concluded — a future for which Ukraine is fighting now and which Moldova is building step by step, together with its partners and friends.