For the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the Ukrainian outlet hromadske published an interview with former cleanup worker and ex-president of Latvia Valdis Zatlers. In 1986, while working as a trauma surgeon in Riga and serving as a senior lieutenant in the medical service, he spent 60 days in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone.
Zatlers said reservists were summoned under the pretext of military retraining. On May 9 they were put on a train, and the next day the regiment, numbering about 700 servicemen, arrived near the plant. He said he already knew about the accident before departure because information had reached Latvia through Sweden, where elevated radiation levels had been detected.
“Our only protection was iodine tablets,” Zatlers said, adding that radioactive iodine posed a particular threat during the first month after the explosion.
He said the camp was rebuilt several times and that the main tasks were scraping off the top contaminated layer of soil with shovels and decontaminating vehicles leaving the zone. Protective equipment, he said, was inadequate: respirators quickly clogged with dust, chemical-protection suits caused rashes, and uniforms were never replaced during the deployment.
After returning to Latvia, Zatlers said, his documents mentioned only military training, and he received official cleanup-worker status later. He also described health effects, including hand tremors, blood problems, and a nervous eye tic.
Speaking about the current war, Zatlers said any Russian strike on Ukrainian nuclear power plants would amount to an atomic catastrophe whose consequences would last for decades and affect more than Ukraine alone. In his view, Europe reacted too slowly with stronger support for Kyiv in 2022–2023, and talks on the war should proceed in a Ukraine — Europe — Russia format.