By Robert A. McConnell

Twenty-four years ago today Unit 4 of the Chornobyl Atomic Power Plant in Ukraine melted down leading to a completely uncontrolled nuclear explosion. We should remember both the Chornobyl disaster and we should remember that it was not until ten days later, May 5, that Moscow acknowledged the scope of the accident.

Because of the cover-up that has continued we will never know the extent of human tragedy for sure. However, the very real political consequences, although never understood (or maybe accepted) in the West, are known and continue to have significant influence on events today.

Attached here is a statement I prepared for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ April 21 hearing on Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, Countering Nuclear Terrorism: The NPT Review Conference and the Nuclear Security Summit. Through the efforts of Committee member Congressman Chris Smith this statement has been included in the hearing file.

You might find the statement interesting especially as to the political consequences of the Chornobyl disaster – a major element of Ukraine’s nationhood and Ukraine’s unique contribution to nuclear security.

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House Committee on Foreign Affairs

April 21, 2010

Hearing on: Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, Countering Nuclear Terrorism: The NPT Review Conference and the Nuclear Security Summit

Statement submitted by Robert A. McConnell

Co-Founder, U.S.-Ukraine Foundation

Chairman Berman, Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen and Distinguished Members of the Committee:

As the Committee looks at the very important issue of nuclear weapons, their proliferation and the potential of their use by terrorists as well as reviewing the results of the April 12-13 Nuclear Security Summit, I offer comments and a historical perspective related to one country most in the news during the Summit – Ukraine.

I do not speak for Ukraine or for anyone in Ukraine, however Mr. Chairman, as you are aware, I am one of the founders of the Washington, D.C.-based U.S.-Ukraine Foundation that, having established an office in Kyiv in 1990, is among a select few with an American presence in Ukraine since before independence. Therefore, I speak for myself and my comments are based upon personal knowledge gained from trips to Ukraine made before we opened our office there, meetings with Ukrainian government officials that began before independence, hundreds of hours spent with the leadership of Rukh (the “Movement” that was established in 1989 and was a fundamental catalyst to Ukraine’s drive for independence), as well as having participated in numerous meetings between officials of the Ukrainian government and officials of our own government in the early 1990s and since.

I am disappointed with what I believe to be the embarrassing lack of recognition on the part of our government of the historical reality of Ukraine’s contribution to nuclear security, the apparent lack of appreciation for the political significance of the decision by Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych to continue Ukraine’s role in contributing to worldwide nuclear security and our, the United States’, all too familiar stance of minimalism when dealing with countries that cooperate with us. Here I will explain. I believe the Ukrainian reality and our treatment of Ukraine should be of great and continuing significance to this Committee.

Last week Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych made headlines at the Washington Nuclear Security Summit with his announcement that Ukraine has agreed to dispose of all of its weapons-grade highly enriched uranium before 2012. The only nation at this summit to have made such a decision, Ukraine’s decision is unique and distinctive in its boldness. However, lost among the reports and statements was what I believe to be a long history, and a much more powerful story about Ukraine’s role and leadership in the arena of international nuclear security and our far too measured and conflicted response, as always, to Ukraine’s actions. Ukraine’s voluntary efforts to become nuclear-free began long before independence and certainly before the Budapest meetings and agreements of 1994. Unfortunately our reactions to those efforts have consistently been colored by Russo-centric attitudes and preferences.

During the evening of April 26, 1986 – 24 years ago next Monday evening – there was an explosion at one of the reactors of the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant in Ukraine, a fact now well known throughout the world. However even today we do not have a complete understanding or information about the consequences of this disaster then and its ongoing ramifications because the Soviet Union took on a major cover-up of this nuclear explosion. We do know that there were devastating consequences in Ukraine, as well as throughout the region and the radioactive plume spread its lethal poison into northern Europe. However, what we, those living outside Ukraine and beyond the area of the catastrophe and disaster, also do not fully understand or appreciate is the visceral reaction to the cover-up of that explosion within the then-Soviet Union, in particular the reaction in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, located only kilometers from the explosion site, as well as the subsequent political reaction and consequences of the radioactive catastrophe. Ukraine is among only a handful of countries or locations that have ever experienced the profound fear, complete disruption and destruction caused by an uncontrolled or unexpected nuclear reaction. And, it is Ukraine’s political reactions to Chornobyl that we need to understand and history needs to record clearly.

Moscow, which then still controlled all dissemination of information throughout the Soviet Union, did not announce or warn the people of Ukraine or nearby Belarus of the Chornobyl accident. When European scientists raised an alarm, on the morning of April 28, Moscow initially denied an accident had occurred. Finally that evening, a Soviet broadcaster announced the following, “An accident occurred at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant and one of the reactors was damaged. Measures have been undertaken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Aid is being given to those affected. A government commission has been established.” The accident was played down and life went on as usual in the Soviet state. Though, as was later learned, Kyiv’s Communist political elite knew, or had suspicions about the disaster and began to evacuate their families, within the first 72 hours after the explosion. However, millions of people within 100 km of Chornobyl, which included Kyiv, and outlying suburbs and villages, had no information whatsoever. On April 30, the lead story in Soviet media was about flowers in Ukraine and preparations for the May Day parade. The public was assured that “the air and water around Kyiv was fine” though we now know the radiation plume returned over Kyiv with increasing amounts of radiation. For the people of Ukraine the first genuine indication that a catastrophe had occurred on their land was on May 1 during the enormous annual May Day parade on Khreshchatyk Street in the city center. As was the custom, all workers and schoolchildren had the day off either to march in or watch the parade. The residents of Kyiv – men, women, children carrying flowers – assembled and participated with no knowledge of the danger in the city’s air. Then, as the marchers in the parade passed the reviewing stand expecting to see the Communist Party elite and government officials, they saw instead near empty stands. The Party elite and high government officials had evacuated, some not only taking extended family and pets but even their prize horses!

Not until May 5 – ten days after the explosion – and only after public outcry from Europe and government pressure from the West did the Kremlin admit to the completely uncontained nature of the explosion and the extent of the radioactive disaster.

The truth of the Soviet Union became fully exposed to its people. In a moment of danger, their leaders had abandoned them completely. The reality of those vacant stands, the delayed and sporadic news about where officials had gone and why, that the government and the Communist Party ignored the people and lied to them about the terrible reality of radiation falling around them, including on their children proudly marching to honor their “Union,” resulted in unequivocal and systemic distrust, as well as undisguised disdain of the system by the citizens of Ukraine.

I add that the truth of the Soviet system also was contemporaneously reconfirmed to us here in the West, at least to those who were paying attention. Aid to victims was gathered and shipped to areas immediately outside the Soviet Union. For instance, flights from Chicago to Poland became routine and were an easily recognizable part of basic aid provided in the months after the Chornobyl disaster. However, Soviet authorities held steadfast to their decision that no Western aid – none – would be sent to Ukraine. American doctors were allowed to fly into Moscow to assist there, but none were allowed into Ukraine. These aid efforts were reported and highlighted in the West but the disparaging treatment of the people of Ukraine, the people most affected, never seemed to trigger any genuine official or media outrage. Indeed to the contrary, as an example, the key cover story about the event in the U.S. News and World Report was titled “Nightmare in Russia.” Then-Editor David Gergen cynically dismissed any suggestion that the title was misleading.

Eventually, significantly more than a year after the nuclear explosion, Western aid finally was allowed into Ukraine. No one will ever be able to define adequately the human cost of the unnecessary delay.

This information is important to place into context, not only to the reality and the implications of this reality within Ukraine, but to add a critical perspective to the history of the American’s on-again, off-again infatuation with Moscow and our frequently myopic Russo-centric attitudes and policies.

I will not go into Ukrainian stories and examples of the devastating human toll of Chornobyl’s radiation, there have been many reports and the truth of all the dimensions of destruction – physical, economic, personal — have not been and can never be fully appreciated. I focus here on the social and political consequences.

There were many elements that brought people together in 1989 to form Rukh – or as it was originally known “Rukh – The Popular Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring” – but one and perhaps the most universally visceral elements was the population’s rage over official – that is Moscow’s – silence about Chornobyl and the cynical desertion of Kyiv and the people by Party leaders, both of which put the lie to Mykhail Gorbachev’s widely heralded programs announced in February 1986, only months before Chornobyl, to “restructure” (perestroika) and make more transparent (glasnost) the social and political system of the Soviet Union. Continuing disregard for the people by “the Center” – the officials at the Kremlin in Moscow — was manifest. Gorbachev’s subsequent palliatives were too little, too late.

The feeling that the center had shown itself to have no regard for the people, no fundamental morality, no sense of right and wrong, no business having authority over nuclear materials and no business having authority over Ukraine ran deep. This outrage was felt by all citizens of Ukraine, those identifying themselves as Ukrainians, or as Russians, or Poles, Jews, Muslims – everyone. They wanted governmental power and authority removed from distant Moscow and placed within Ukraine – where the people of Ukraine could see and get to their governmental officials.

It is this dread of nuclear disaster, the experience with the health consequences – the immediate rise in infant deformities, increase in the number of stillbirths, acute illnesses and later impotence among the disaster clean-up workers, increase in the number of child thyroid cancers, bizarre malignancies – that were a strong impetus for the citizens of Ukraine to reject the nuclear option.

And this is a most remarkable political fact that must be stated: in 1989, in its founding documents – The Program and Charter of Rukh: The Popular Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring — the citizen’s movement called for many things, but clearly and unequivocally called for Ukraine to be a nuclear-free state. Whereas some news media and analysts at the time considered this point to be of only mild relevance, a type of “feel-good-throw-away line” – the reality was that this point was one of passionate debate among the founders of Rukh. The desire for Ukraine to be nuclear-free was overwhelming. The only real concern within the debate was argued by those who bluntly asked the question if Ukraine was ever to rid itself of its nuclear materials, where would those materials go? To Russia, with its Moscow leadership whom they did not trust?

The fact that as early as 1989, there were those among Ukraine’s political leadership who knew and understood the full danger of nuclear materials, and on principle, insisted that Ukraine be nuclear-free and memorialized that position in guiding political documents has never been fully understood or appreciated in the West.

When I first visited Ukraine in March 1990, I spoke with people of all types, leaders of Rukh, government officials, the man-on-the-street, dissidents, leaders of the Jewish community, prominent writers and religious leaders and their universal feeling about nuclear materials was clear – they wanted their country to be nuclear-free. This was not mentioned occasionally, this was mentioned in every meeting, in every conversation – private, and public. This was a strong and visceral objective of the people of Ukraine. Chornobyl may have made worldwide headlines and been the subject of many studies and conferences and its clean-up may continue as a government-to-government issue, but the Chornobyl disaster also was a message and a political symbol – a rallying point in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s fundamental inhumanity was exposed when the children of Ukraine were exposed and their safety was shown to be of no interest to the leaders of the mighty Soviet Union.

Ukraine’s drive to be nuclear-free did not end with the Rukh founding documents in 1989. In July 1990, Ukraine’s parliament adopted a Declaration of Sovereignty and prominently included was the declaration that Ukraine was to be nuclear-free. Then on August 24, 1991, Ukraine declared its independence. Stated prominently in the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine was the call for a “nuclear-free” state, which was the run up to the December 1 referendum for independence that again highlighted the desire to make an independent Ukraine nuclear-free, a referendum, supported by more than 90% of the voters!

If ever there is a country that has had both a reason and a determination to be nuclear-free, it is Ukraine. Ukraine’s actions did not stop with declarations, but continued after independence. Ukraine acted upon its declaration: officials sought a way to dismantle and dispose of aging nuclear missiles. As mentioned earlier, in the early 1990s, the last people Ukraine trusted with anything that could endanger the lives of the people of Ukraine were the power elite in Russia, under the direction of the Kremlin. Ukrainian officials wanted to turn over Ukraine’s warheads to the United States and said so many times, on many occasions. Moscow, however, vehemently protested Ukraine’s position, insisting that the warheads be delivered to Russia. I was in meetings and I was, on occasion, an intermediary to these discussions.

And herein is a serious point of frustration and the crux of the perspective on Ukraine’s role that prompts this testimony.

Many disparaging media reports and much political analysis at the time suggested Ukraine had to be cajoled into giving up its nuclear warheads, or that Ukraine demanded to be “paid off.” I am not going to comment in detail about this disinformation or its origins, but again, I think it is important a certain historical perspective and reality be presented. During an intense debate throughout 1993-1994, we – the United States – no doubt, I believe, with outrageous pressure from the Kremlin – insisted that Ukraine turn over its nuclear warheads to Russia. We insisted that they turn over the weapons that they had been wanting off their soil since 1986 to the one government, the one country, to which they did not want to give them. We insisted Ukraine turn over its nuclear warheads to Russia when Russia was demonstrably the greatest external threat to Ukraine’s independence, fomenting political unrest in Crimea through various military and political agencies of the Sevastopol-based Russian Black Sea Fleet. The United States government surely knew this, but our obsession with non-proliferation at any price and traditional infatuation with Moscow led us, embarrassingly, to try to isolate Ukraine and turn the country into an international pariah. Ukraine had a long history and publicly stated commitment to become nuclear-free but not under the absurd conditions we demanded. We disparaged Ukraine’s resistance to being coerced into acting against its best interests. Any hesitancy, all reluctance, on the part of Ukraine was because of our insistence that it not give its nuclear warheads to us or any western power but instead turn them over to Russia!

In the end Ukraine agreed to send the missiles on its territory to Russia for dismantling, but as a security measure, insisted that the enriched uranium found in the warheads be returned to Ukraine. Ukraine’s independence was not yet solidified and the fear of a resurgent Russian imperialism was palatable and the evidence of Moscow’s disruptive proclivities readily apparent. Ukraine also insisted the United States participate in the transfer and dismantling of the weapons to which the United States agreed and the uranium was returned modified as fuel assemblies for power plants. In December 1994, the Budapest Memorandum of Security Assurances was signed in which Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom agreed to respect Ukraine’s borders in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act and agreed to abstain from the use or threat of force against Ukraine, including economic coercion, and to bring any incident of aggression against Ukraine by a nuclear power before the United Nations Security Council.

Any record that hides these facts or implies anything different is wrong and a disservice to both Ukraine and to the historic and important lessons to be taken from Moscow’s negligence in its nuclear program and its indifference to the consequences of the failure of that program, as well as a continuation of our ostrich-like foreign policy toward the Kremlin. We properly speak about the danger of nuclear weapons and materials falling into the wrong hands and hypothesize about potential consequences to make our case. We don’t need hypothetical examples, we have a genuine example in Ukraine and Ukraine provides the honest example of people’s reaction and the choice they made. We cheapen our arguments and diminish the human costs of a lesson learned by not recording clearly that Ukraine and her citizens have led the world in voluntary nuclear disarmament and why. We continue to expose a certain degree of bad faith in our own policies as long as we do not fulfill all of the promises we made to Ukraine in return for its action in sending its nuclear missiles to Russia.

And finally, we miss a very important signal from the government of the newly elected President Yanukovych if we do not prominently acknowledge and honor that he is continuing to pursue a genuine and uniquely Ukrainian policy of voluntarily disposing of nuclear materials.

This policy, born of tragedy, is one that originated with the desire of the people of Ukraine and one that in significant part led to Ukraine’s independence and the collapse of the Soviet Union. This continuing Ukrainian policy also is one that each government of Ukraine has pursued since independence despite the overwhelming evidence that the United States treats those countries that are problems better than we do those countries that cooperate with us. This should be of interest and concern to this Committee.