By Olha Hembik | 2026-04-24

Forty years ago this week, two explosions tore through reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant during a safety test gone catastrophically wrong. Authorities evacuated 50,000 residents from the nearby city of Pripyat, but only 36 hours after the blast. Later, they relocated more than 100,000 people from the surrounding 30-kilometer (19-mile) exclusion zone.

Some never left. Others came back.

They call them "samosely" -- self-settlers. The state disapproved of their return but could not stop it. Today, a small group of elderly Ukrainians still lives in the contaminated villages of Kupovate, Teremtsi, Illintsi and Lubyanka, tending gardens and keeping bees on radioactive land. Their numbers shrink each year.

The last holdouts

Krystian Machnik, a Polish researcher who has studied the Chernobyl accident and radioactivity for years, has delivered humanitarian aid to the self-settlers for more than eight years. He has visited the exclusion zone 125 times.

"The first resident, Hanna Chalaya, returned just a week after the disaster -- the term 'samosely' didn't even exist then," Machnik told Kontur.

The peak of returns came in 1987, with resettlements continuing into the 1990s. Now Machnik's team cares for 24 people, half the number he supported when he started.

"Most of these elderly people have no relatives or help; they are left to their own devices and survive in difficult conditions," he said. "If someone is seventy, by local standards they are 'youth.'"

On February 2, the zone's oldest resident, Maria Chalaya, turned 100. Machnik's team carried a birthday cake with three candles into the exclusion zone. Chalaya suffers from dementia and depends on her 73-year-old daughter. For her age, she is relatively well.

Life-threatening radiation levels have dropped hundreds of times over four decades. The complete decay of remaining radioactive elements, however, will take more than 24,000 years.

Preserving memory

Each expedition Machnik runs costs about 10,000 PLN (roughly $2,500), with fuel as the main expense. He drives more than 1,000 km (620 miles) from his hometown of Ostrów Wielkopolski each time. Donations from Polish citizens fund the missions.

"People donate small amounts, and we gather large sums to do great things," he said.

The team documents life in the exclusion zone and posts videos to YouTube. To preserve the memory of those who stayed, they place plaques on the gates of abandoned homes listing who lived there and what they did. Machnik also wrote a book about the zone, The Last People of Chernobyl.

War comes to the zone

On February 24, 2022, Russian troops entering from Belarus occupied the Chernobyl exclusion zone. They held it for five weeks before withdrawing on March 31.

"Ukrainian troops moved to the outskirts of Kyiv, so Chernobyl saw no military confrontation. Russian troops seized it in a single day," Machnik said.

He had delivered enough supplies to the self-settlers just before the invasion. Russian forces checked on residents living near Chernobyl but did not reach the villages.

The damage came from looting. Russian troops stole service vehicles, computers, dosimeters, and specialized laboratory equipment from the nuclear plant. Losses at Chernobyl totaled more than 1.6 billion hryvnias (approximately $38 million).

"The Chernobyl grannies saw military helicopters flying toward Hostomel and Bucha and grew frightened," Machnik said. "One of the helicopters hovered over the houses in Kupovate and fired at targets in the direction of Kyiv."

Russian soldiers seized Viktor Lukyanenko, the last resident of the abandoned town of Poliske, and took him to a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp, where he was beaten. They looted his home and destroyed his car. From the camp, authorities transferred Lukyanenko to Russia to stay with his daughter. Machnik's team managed to reach him there.

"He said he would definitely return to Ukraine, buy a Lada, and live in Poliske again," Machnik said.

It was not to be. On February 18, 2026, Viktor Lukyanenko died of a stroke at 85. He was buried in Russia.