Now, on the 31st anniversary of the tragedy, the funeral meeting-requiem, as in the past year, was held at 6 pm in the walls of the Holy Dormition Cathedral of Viciebsk. After the official rally, the liquidators of the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident and representatives of the city's public let down a memorial wreath to the Dźvina on an annual basis.

For the second year in a row, the Viciebsk authorities, together with the Orthodox Church, recall the victims of the Chernobyl disaster. The current measure almost fully corresponded to last year's scenario. The same words, the same pathos verses, the same participants: representatives of the authorities, cadets of the cadet school, young firemen, and, as if out of place, several liquidators for whom they did not even think to put chairs, although it was already difficult for some to stand. Noticing this, the situation was corrected by someone present, and the chairs soon appeared.

Famous from last year's performance poems are heard in the walls of the church in the performance of a professional artist:

Simple, good guys –
There are a thousand of them, and they cannot be counted.
They are here because it is necessary.
Chernobyl is their conscience and honor.

They sound as if sincerely, as if everything is true, but in every word – substitution. Substitution, hiding the bitter truth about Chernobyl. The truth is that hundreds of thousands of simple and good guys had to pay with their lives and health for someone else's ignorance and violation of the norms of operation of nuclear power plants.

From the power of the word in memory of those affected by Chernobyl spoke the chairman of the Viciebsk City Council of Deputies Vladimir Belevich. Dry figures, official words for pro forma, behind which there is no personal relation to what is being said. I am amazed all this time by the total inability of the authorities to find the relevant situations of the word.

As in the past year, church lithium was sincere in memory of firefighters, liquidators and victims of radiation.

After the event in the Holy Dormition Cathedral was over, citizens put the funeral candles and slowly separated.

But the liquidators, members of the civil organization "Union Chernobyl-Belarus", and representatives of the democratic public of the city descended to the Dźvina and put a mourning wreath on the river in memory of those who were prematurely taken by Chernobyl. No speeches were said, but the expressions of the faces of those who looked at the wreath, swam into eternity, was more eloquent than any words.

S. Horki