In 2011, Fakty-Ukraine published an interview with Boris Gorbachev, a nuclear physicist from Kyiv. In it, he says the following: “I could not find out who made the decision to increase the capacity for many years, although I interviewed witnesses and studied a lot of documents. Suddenly, in one of the Russian publications, an interview appeared with Vladimir Komarov, who headed the expert commission to investigate the causes of the Chornobyl accident at the USSR Prosecutor General’s Office, which shed light on previously unknown events that took place a few minutes before the disaster.”
Komarov explains: “In the early 80s, a center for the Supervision of Nuclear Power Plants was created under the Central Committee. It included V. Maryin and G. Kopchinsky. These officials were not engaged in security, but actively intervened in the operational management of the station, which led to the disaster. The test director Dyatlov clearly saw that the reactor was in an iodine pit, and it was uncontrollable. Apparently, he still hoped that he would “slip through”, so he decided to carry out the order from Moscow. After all, Kopchinsky literally said the following: “Carry out the test! Either you retire, or you will be the chief engineer of the new Chornobyl NPP-2.”
Komarov and Kopchinsky both appear in The Russian Woodpecker documentary at the 48th minute.
