ABSTRACT
The following report is, as far as I know, only to be found in the Russian language publication Youth, June 1987 issue, and refers to the eyewitness account of the first doctor to arrive at the scene of the accident, Dr Valentin Petrovich Belokon. He was 28 years old at the time of the accident, with two young daughters, Tania aged 5 years and Katya aged 1½ months. He was also a sportsman who specialised in weight lifting and was employed in Pripyat (the nearest town to the power station) as an accident and emergency physician. This interview took place probably some 2 months after the accident and Dr Belokon was again interviewed in the autumn of 1986. He was by then working as a paediatrician in Donetsk and suffered breathing problems as an after-effect of his experiences. The interviewer was a journalist, Yuri Scherbak.
