President Maia Sandu’s message at ceremony of commemoration of Chernobyl nuclear disaster

 

President Zelenskyy, 

Excellencies,

We are standing on ground that changed the world. And we all know why.

What I want to reflect on today is not the explosion itself. It is what the explosion revealed.

A Soviet regime that placed its own reputation above people's lives. That kept people in the dark while a reactor burned — because the powerful believed they had the right to decide what the powerless were permitted to know.

More than 3,500 Moldovans were among those sent here as liquidators. Many of them, given inadequate protection and incomplete truth. Asked to be brave on behalf of a system that did not return that bravery with honesty. Moldova remembers them today.

Chornobyl became a moment of rupture. A sudden clarity, for millions of people, about the nature of the system under which they were living. A system that would send its own people into a burning reactor and call it duty. Once people saw it for what it was, they could not unsee it. And history turned.

What followed gave the world reason for hope. Nations that did not always agree came together — and over two decades built what stands behind us today. The New Safe Confinement is proof that shared responsibility, sustained over time, can accomplish extraordinary things. That when the international community acts with unity and purpose, it can contain even the worst of disasters.

That proof matters more than ever. Because the contempt that caused this disaster has not disappeared.

The same disregard for human life that defined the Soviet response is visible today — in Russia’s strikes on Ukrainian cities, in occupied nuclear facilities, in the war that Moscow refuses to even call a war. 

When Russian forces occupied Chornobyl in 2022, and then Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, they were making a deliberate choice — to weaponise the anxiety that places like this carry in the hearts of millions. That fear reached Moldova too. It reached all of us.

The Arch here was built by the international community as a shared act of responsibility towards all of humanity. When a Russian drone struck it last year, it was not only infrastructure that was damaged. It was a statement — that what the world builds together in a spirit of peace and protection, can be targeted and broken.

That statement must be answered. Nuclear safety has always demanded continuity and collective commitment — across governments, across years. 

The same spirit that built the New Safe Confinement must now carry the work forward. On this, I trust the international community to meet the moment.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Forty years on, the lessons of this place are very much present.

We learned what it looks like when a state treats its own people as expendable — and we learned that the price is paid not only by those in immediate danger, but by generations to come. 

We learned that nuclear safety is a permanent responsibility. 

We learned that radiation — and fear — travel without asking for permission, and that no country is an island when catastrophe strikes.

And above all: we learned what kind of society we want to build. One that tells its citizens the truth. One that sends no one into danger without protection and without honesty. One where the state is truly worthy of the trust placed in it.

That is the future Ukraine is fighting for right now. And it is the future Moldova is building, step by step, alongside our partners and friends.

To the men and women who came to this place forty years ago — from Moldova, from Ukraine, from across this region — and to their families — we honour you today. Your courage was real. Your sacrifice was not in vain

Thank you.