The work of the state group on nominating the Chornobyl Zone for UNESCO.

At the next meeting of the working group at the Ministry of Culture, again with Sergii Mirnyi and Yaroslav Yemelianenko, the hardest part moved forward. "Today we resolved the most important, most difficult political questions. Now it is up to the specialists," Yaroslav wrote.

Then the state took the lead. The Ukrainian State Institute of Cultural Heritage held its first working meeting with the Exclusion Zone Agency and the Chornobyl Reserve. After a trip to the Zone and a round table with tour operators, the Minister of Culture named putting its sites on the UNESCO list a task of the ministry. Two ministries and two state agencies signed a memorandum on the development of the Zone, and the working group got a coordinator. In the summer of 2021 the ministry presented a roadmap and began compiling a dossier for the Tentative List. By its own estimate, this stage may take five to ten years.

On the 35th anniversary of the accident, Germany's Tagesschau reported on the bid. Yaroslav told journalists then: before applying to UNESCO, we ourselves must recognize what the Zone means to us.

State announcements do not mention the civic initiators. But the idea we once took around the Zone in two busloads of experts became state policy. The list itself is still far away: the Tentative List, the nomination dossier and inscription are three different stages. As of November 2026, the Chornobyl Zone is not yet on Ukraine's Tentative List.