The first New Year tree in Prypiat since 1986.

Next to the Energetyk Palace of Culture, on the central square of Prypiat, a New Year tree stood for the first time since the accident. It was put up by the Association of Chornobyl Tour Operators.

It was decorated by the people of Prypiat themselves - twenty cars came, including buses. Instead of ornaments and garlands, the branches held old clocks and photos from family albums: the town and its residents before April 26, 1986. For some of these people it was their first time back in their home town. There were many emotions. All kinds. Warm ones.

Oleksii Breus, an operator of Unit 4 and a former Prypiat resident, brought a photo from 1981: he had just arrived in town to start work.

Oleksandr Demydov came too. He once founded and ran Edison-2, the legendary disco in this very Energetyk, one of the best in the Soviet Union: three big screens, theater acts and Western music despite the censorship. He was its first and last DJ. The next disco night was scheduled for April 27, 1986. Oleksandr now lives in Slavutych. He brought to the tree the original records he once played here and hung them on the branches. Former neighbors sorted through them and remembered how Prypiat lived and what music played here.

Journalists asked: why a tree, why here, what for? A New Year tree is a symbol of home and comfort. That is exactly why it could not exist in a town whose residents had been evacuated. But life is returning to Prypiat. It is unusual, a tourist life: every day the once abandoned town fills with people from all over the world. Young guides who come here to work meet their partners and start families.

For the sake of this new life, the Zone must be preserved. And for that its sites need the status of national landmarks and of UNESCO World Heritage. That is protection. That is memory of the heroism of the people who made Chornobyl safe.

60 journalists worked on the square. Reuters, Radio Liberty, Suspilne and many others reported on the first tree in Prypiat. And the people of Prypiat thanked us for the chance to come home and for the effort to save their home. We are grateful to the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management and the Kyiv Regional State Administration for their support.

Five years later we repeated the "Prypiat tree" - this time at the National Museum "Chornobyl" in Kyiv. There was no longer any road to Prypiat itself.