Petro Shavrey was one of the three legendary brothers who participated in liquidating the fires on April 26 at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. All three were at the scene even sooner than the Pravik team. Petro Shavrey, the youngest brother who was 30 at the time, in his 2020 interview with a leading Ukrainian media described the details. The name of the original article in Ukrainian was ‘They were dying because they were treated in Moscow’: a hero, whom ‘Chernobyl’ miniseries did not show, told the truth about the accident‘. The translation of selected parts is by the author of this article.
“I served in paramilitary unit #2 of the Nuclear Plant Security. I was an inspector of Reactor Shop #1. My duty was to control the work of loading and unloading the fuel… Approximately half a year before the Disaster, Leonid Telyatnikov brought me to control the construction of the Energy Block Five. On the night of the Accident, the Reactor Schemes were being compiled. I left two junior inspectors there and gave them instructions. I came home, had supper, and was already half asleep. When suddenly the doorbell rang and Senior Lieutenant Yury Khilko said: “Hurry up, the plant exploded!” At first, I thought that those were my inspectors who messed something up. And in my head, I painted a picture that it was my fault. But when the car brought us to the Yanivsky Bridge, I saw the ruined Block Four and such a beautiful multicolored pillar of fire rising up. It was beaming with such a beauty that is impossible to forget. Then Khilko says: “This is it, boys, the road with one end, we shall not return”.
My brothers, Leonid and Ivan, were part of the shift that night and that is why they started putting away fires in seven minutes. When I arrived, I took off the shoes and pulled on military boots. I had my usual uniform on me. And put on a 16-kilogram anti-gas mask. Then I heard my brother Leonid’s voice who was a leader of his unit that was already putting out the fires on top of Machine Unit: “Give us new hoses, these have burnt already!”
I grabbed the 8-kilogram coils of hoses with each hand and started climbing the ladder. Sweat was covering my eyes, so I took the anti-gas mask off and threw it down. Leonid shouted again. I brought him the hoses, but there was no water because the pipes were damaged. The pumps did not work, there was no electricity. It was needed to urgently install a pump station and take the coolant from the pool. I burned my hands with radiation and the skin peeled entirely afterward.
And after 10-15 minutes, Team #6 arrived in which were Vasyly Ignatenko, Tishura, and Kibenok. Do you know why they died and we stayed alive? Because we worked on our object, we knew where to enter, and where to exit. But their Unit, where Ignatenko was, had been taking care of the town’s security. They came to us for exercises three times a year but did not know the plant well. When they arrived [on the 26th of April], they saw where it was burning, and that was radiation burning. And they went straight into radiation and found themselves right in the center of it. If they had climbed at the side of, let us say, a transport corridor, everything would have been different. Instead, they worked for 20 minutes, and that was it. The ambulances were only in time to come and take them. And in a day, they were by plane taken to the Moscow clinic.
- But you also received very serious radiation dosages. How were you treated?
My elder brother Leonid received 600 Roentgen. The boys who died in Moscow had 400-450, and only one had – 500. That is exactly for the reason that they were treated in Moscow [that they died], and we – in Kyiv, at Leonid Petrovych Kindzelsly [that is why we lived].
Something kept us from going to Moscow. Even before the accident, I knew that in case of radiation exposure, one needs to drink some alcohol. Our team leader Frolovsky used to say when they had traced some radiation on me after the shift: “Son, you are to bring children into this world yet. Go and drink half a glass of hard alcohol, and without it, you are not allowed to leave the plant”. Also, we were to plant potatoes in our native Bily Soroky village, and Ivan was to help his mother-in-law at another village as well. And here they are driving us to Moscow. So we decided to flee. But we failed because Pripyat got closed and were were ordered to stay in service. But already the next day they took us far from Chornobyl. They took our analyses at a Fire Station. We felt really bad and were lying in the grass. Then the buses arrived, which took us first to a hospital in Ivankiv where they put us on an IV drip almost for a day. The nurses sat with us and constantly changed the droppers. And already in the second part of the next day, they brought us to Kyiv to the Oncology clinic at Lomonosova St.
American Dr. Gale gave me 7 years to live. But here I am 34 years later
At the Kyiv clinic, they washed us first, took away all our clothes, and brought whatever they had. My brother received a nightgown, I received a blanket cover. Only after dinner, they gave us some clothes.
Doctors were treating us differently from Moscow ones. There, they were afraid of the boys and kept their distance from them. Their medics were walking in protective suits resembling the spacesuit. During the first days, they [Chornobyl firefighters] were not even put on IV drippers, for two weeks they were given some pills. They were placed in separate boxes. But our doctor talked to us just like we are talking with you now.
Then the chief doctor of the Moscow clinic #6 Guskova together with American Professor Gale flew to Kyiv to see how Dr. Kindzelsky was treating us. Our doctor was wearing just his medical gown but they came in in their spacesuits for fear of Ukrainian radiation. Leonid Petrovich [Kindzelsky] was taking medical cards and reading the names of patients, and their analyses.
I was shocked when Gale came to me and told me via a translator that this one would last some seven years. To my brother Leonid, he predicted from 3 to 5 years, but he lived for 25 more years, and I am alive still now. But the boys in Moscow remained at the cemetery.
Kindzelsky treated us according to his own method
My brother Leonid had his bone marrow transplanted. In his bone marrow, 27% of live cells remained and he was wasting away already. If he had been treated in Moscow, he would have been in the cemetery long ago. Dr. Kindzelsky’s method was to transplant live bone marrow, and that was its difference. Because, according to Gale’s theory, for the patients whose own bone marrow had been killed by 80%, the donor’s bone marrow should be irradiated first as well, and transplanted only afterward.
For the reason Dr. Kindzelsky was doing everything according to his own way, Moscow’s Guskova removed him from office. But he was visiting us nevertheless and promising that he would not abandon us. “They disallowed me to work independently, but I was saving people,” – he was saying. But Moscow wanted him to follow Dr. Gale’s methods. Donor’s bone marrow in my brother engrafted and he started to recover. But they [Moscow] killed people with their experiments. How can it be that only one person died among us [in Kyiv], and in Moscow died almost all?
After that, Dr. Kindzelsky was restored to his office, and Guskova came again to Kyiv and asked him to share his methods with her. But he refused to share it with her. Moscow still does not have it, but the US does.
Dr. Kindzelsky and his story >
Leonid Shavrey and Dr. Kindzelsky’s son who brought his father’s secret with him to the US >
