Word: kiev
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...accident. Other nations have severely criticized the Soviets for first concealing the disaster from the world and then providing scant information. Many Soviet citizens are also resentful because they were not warned of the danger until more than a week after the accident. Residents of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, 80 miles from the crippled reactor, took no safety precautions in the same period. Many now fear that they suffered radiation damage. Some pregnant women are reportedly being advised by doctors to have abortions...
...dove on nuclear issues, Gorbachev lashed out aggressively at sensational Western news reports of the Chernobyl disaster. Said he: "Generally speaking, we faced a veritable mountain of lies--most dishonest and malicious lies." The Soviet leader spoke of stories citing "thousands of casualties, mass graves of the dead, desolate Kiev, that the entire land of the Ukraine has been poisoned, and on and on." Such accounts, Gorbachev said, reflected the desire of "certain Western politicians" to "defame the Soviet Union" and deflect growing criticism of the "militaristic course" of U.S. policy...
Packed trains from the beleaguered Ukrainian capital streamed into Moscow during the week. Many Kiev passengers were arriving to join families for Friday celebrations of Victory Day, a national holiday marking the defeat of Nazi Germany, but many others were fleeing radiation from Chernobyl. Spokesmen at Moscow's Kievsky Station said extra trains had to be added to handle the crush. Said a Kiev passenger who arrived with two young children and identified herself only as Svetlana: "We started to believe that it might be dangerous for our children at home. They can stay with their grandmother until we know...
Evidence of the danger that people in the Kiev area may be facing came from some distant sources. Experts found surprisingly high radiation levels, for example, in members of a Western Michigan University tour group that had visited Kiev two days after the mishap. Tests by health technicians at a Consumers Power nuclear plant near South Haven, Mich., showed that 14 of the tourists had absorbed almost 1,500 millirems of radiation, or 50 times the amount in a chest X ray. Robert English, corporate health physicist for Consumers Power, said that the Americans faced minimal long-term health hazards...
...Thursday the Soviets allowed a group of reporters to visit Kiev. They met with Ukrainian Premier Lyashko, who said that a total of 84,000 people had been evacuated from the general vicinity of the plant. The area was cleared in two stages, Lyashko said. The initial move took place within a six-mile zone around the plant that authorities later extended to 18 miles. He added that 230 teams of Soviet medical workers were working outside the cordoned-off sector to aid evacuees...