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A woman who survived the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 was killed in a Russian strike on Ukraine.
Natalia Khodemchuk was married to nuclear engineer Valery Khodemchuk – the night shift circulating pump operator at the power plant, and the first casualty of the explosion.
Almost 40 years later, she has died after an overnight Russian strike blitzed her flat in Kyiv – part of a residential block housing Chernobyl survivors.
Natalia, who was rushed to hospital with severe burns covering 45% of her body, died hours later on Friday.
Her death brings the number of fatalities from last night’s attack up to seven, with at least 35 injured.
Social media users have responded with horror, with one X user writing: ‘Utterly monstrous. Her husband perished in the service of the Soviet Union, now Moscow has come back to inflict a similarly terrible death on her.’
‘She survived one of the worst disasters in history only to be killed decades later by a drone strike in her own home,’ another wrote.
Khodemchuk’s husband, Valery, 35, was killed in 1986 when two powerful explosions tore through the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the dead of night.
He was the first to die in the Soviet horror and his remains were never found. It is believed he was ‘vapourised’ in the explosion.
Russian strikes on Friday night saw about 430 drones and 18 missiles wreak havoc across Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described them as a ‘heinous’ attempt to terrorise the Ukrainian populace.
The aerial assault also hit Odesa in the south and Kharkiv in the northeast but was mostly aimed at Kyiv, according to Zelensky.
The overnight attacks follow the deaths of six people in another Russian offensive less than a week ago, which also damaged residential buildings and energy infrastructure.
Three people were killed and 12 wounded when a drone hit an apartment building in Dnipro, on November 8.
Another person was killed in the Kharkiv region and three were killed in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, regional officials said.
Energy infrastructure in the regions of Kyiv, Poltava and Kharkiv was damaged, Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
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