THE Ukrainian widow of the first Chernobyl victim has been killed by a Russian drone blast.
Nataliia Khodemchuk died after her flat was struck by an Iranian-made Shahed device – 39 years after her husband died in the Soviet nuclear disaster.
Nataliia, 73, was married to Valery Khodemchuk, a circulating-pump operator who died in the horrific Reactor 4 explosion in 1986.
She died in hospital after sustaining severe burns following the Kremlin’s onslaught on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, in the early hours of Friday.
Her flat, located in the Troieshchyna district, was among several in a housing block for ex-Chernobyl workers and their families to have been targeted.
Her husband was the first of about 31 people who died in Chernobyl.
Paying tribute to the 73-year-old, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said X: “Nearly four decades [after the disaster], Nataliia was killed in a new tragedy caused once again by the Kremlin.
“Ukrainians who survived Chornobyl, who helped rebuild the country after that disaster, are once again facing danger – the terror of an aggressor state.”
The home of Oleksit Ananeko, one of three engineers who risked their lives to go underneath the Chernobyl reactor and stop a second blast, was also hit.
As a key member of the so-called “Suicide Squad”, he is believed to have saved millions of lives by preventing a 3-5 megaton nuclear explosion, which would have made most of Europe uninhabitable.
Russia’s Friday strikes on Kyiv, saw hundreds of drones swarm the city in the early hours of the morning, blasting apartment buildings and setting the city alight.
The sound of explosions boomed across the city and lit up the sky as at least 35 were injured in another heinous attack.
The assault was described as the biggest on Kyiv in almost three weeks – targeting civilian buildings and turning streets into rubble.
Zelensky slammed the overnight rampage as “vile and calculated”.
He said some 430 drones and 18 missiles struck a number of high-rise buildings, causing widespread devastation.
He added: “This was a deliberately calculated attack aimed at causing maximum harm to people and civilian infrastructure”.
Meanwhile, officials said homes in “practically every district” came under attack.
The city military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, warned residents to take shelter just after midnight on Thursday.
In a post on Telegram, he wrote: “It’s loud in Kyiv”.
Kyiv residents recalled the horrors – describing “collapsed” buildings, neighbours “screaming” and sheer panic as Vlad’s forces unleashed hell on their homes.
Mariia Kalchenko said it was a miracle she survived after her building was struck.
She said: “I didn’t hear anything, I just realised that my hair was on fire.
“I turned around and saw that there was no wall, and there was a neighbours apartment, the neighbour was screaming, there was no door, and the flames were going from the front door into the apartment.”
Oleh Hudyma, 59, said he was heading to a bomb shelter when he heard the force of the attack.
He said: “I got up, got dressed, went out, and there was an explosion. I couldn’t hear the (drone) engine running, just an explosion, flames, everything flew, he said.
“I was in the kitchen and just fell to the floor.”
Meanwhile, Iryna Synyavska, 62, said three people were killed in two apartments next to hers.
She said: “My neighbour and his father were killed by the ceiling that collapsed. In the next-door apartment, an elderly woman lived there; she was over 80, Synyavska said. Her daughter was visiting her.
“Her body was only just recovered because the walls fell down.”
Eight of the capital’s 10 districts were reportedly struck, including the Azerbaijani Embassy, which was damaged by debris from an Iskander missile.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev slammed the events as unacceptable, considering the country is a key transport corridor for Russian trade with Iran and other partners in the Middle East.
In the Odesa region, Russian drones struck a busy street on market day in Chornomorsk, killing two people and wounding 11 others, including a 19-month-old girl, regional military administration chief Oleh Kiper said.
What is the Chernobyl disaster?
THE nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl claimed 31 lives as well as leaving thousands of people and animals exposed to potentially fatal radiation.
When an alarm bellowed out at the nuclear plant on April 26, 1986, workers looked on in horror as the control panels signaled a major meltdown in the number four reactor.
The safety switches had been switched off in the early hours to test the turbine but the reactor overheated and generated a blast – the equivalent of 500 nuclear bombs.
The catastrophe released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Soviet authorities waited 24 hours before evacuating the nearby town of Pripyat – giving the 50,000 residents just three hours to leave their homes.
After the accident traces of radioactive deposits were found in Belarus where poisonous rain damaged plants and caused animal mutations.
But the devastating impact was also felt in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, France and the UK.
An 18-mile radius known as the “Exclusion Zone” was set up around the reactor following the disaster.
