The day the Chernobyl Museum burned
At 5 a.m. on May 24, employees at Kyiv’s Chernobyl Museum heard the thud of what was almost certainly an Iskander missile.
TL;DR
- An Iskander missile struck the Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv on May 24.
- Museum staff rescued about 23,000 artifacts before evacuating due to the building's instability.
- The museum preserved historical documents, photographs, personal effects, and eyewitness accounts of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
- The targeting of the museum is questioned, with possibilities including general attacks on cultural sites or a deliberate strike to destroy records of Soviet-era safety negligence.
- The destruction of the museum, an institution preserving memory and truth, carries significant historical irony given its subject matter.
- The future of the building is uncertain, with engineers yet to determine if it can be rebuilt.