About us.

For many years we took people where most are afraid even to look - into the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. That work taught us a few simple things.

Fear goes away when people pick up a dosimeter themselves and see the numbers. Events are best told by those who lived through them. And if something needs to be done, you go and do it, without waiting for someone's permission or someone's money.

We are a small team of people from CHORNOBYL TOUR. In 1986 Sergii Mirnyi measured radiation in the Zone as a platoon commander of radiation reconnaissance. Kateryna Aslamova led groups through the Zone for years with a dosimeter in her hands. Yaroslav Yemelianenko once worked in television. Around us are guides, drivers, friends and tourists who once came with us and stayed.

What Chornobyl taught us

Liquidators have often told us similar stories. The hardest part was not in the Zone but afterwards: spending years going from office to office to prove you had been there. People who were resettled were moved into strangers' apartments and left without help. The accident was caused by an explosion. But what made it a disaster for the country was how people were treated afterwards.

That is why we try to help simply and directly: without forms, long approvals or photos "for the report." For a long time we did not even call it volunteering. Someone nearby needed something - and we did what we could.

February 24

That morning a small camera on our kiosk at the Dytiatky checkpoint showed russian columns, and we counted every vehicle. Within a few days a tour company became a supply and evacuation service. We raced through empty Kyiv, sleepless, running on adrenaline, and suddenly the feeling was familiar: this is what an ordinary working day in high season looked like.

"Doing something is much easier than doing nothing. When you are constantly on the move, there is no time for despair," says Kateryna.

Since then we have been delivering aid to soldiers and to people in liberated villages. We now talk about radiation to deminers and soldiers. And when panic spreads across Kyiv, we explain things calmly, with science in hand.

How we work

Mostly without a budget. But we have people we can call. A chef who feeds our guests with no strings attached. A band that finds time between trips to the east. A stranger who, as the sirens wail, drains the gasoline from his own moped to start our armored vehicle. People like these are what keeps us going.

European colleagues once called us crazy people who do national-level projects without any conditions. Maybe so. We are simply used to doing first and counting later.

What we live on

Our work used to be paid for by Chornobyl tourism. The war stopped it, and now the team is kept going by the Chornobyl shop. That is why we hardly ever ask for money. If you want to support us, buy something in the shop. If you simply want to help, donate to the Defense Forces.

We registered the charitable foundation only in 2022. But the people and the work are the same as for many years before.

Volunteer Center CHORNOBYL. EDRPOU code 44770614. 11 Andriivskyi Uzviz, Kyiv.