Samosely: The images of Chernobyl illegal residents

Samosely (Belarusian: самасёлы, Russian: самосёлы, Ukrainian: самосели — “self-settlers”) are residents of the 30 kilometer Zone of Alienation surrounding the most heavily contaminated areas near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The zone contains a number of abandoned towns and villages whose the population is now the people who either refused to evacuate the area or secretly resettled in the relatively unprotected region after it was isolated. The majority of the samosely are elderly people who made their home in the area prior to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. When the population was evacuated, they were initially told they could return in a few days. As of 2009, there are thought to be less than 300 remaining samosely of an earlier population estimated at over 10,000. Most are concentrated in the town of Chernobyl, and majority the population dispersed in other villages throughout the zone. In these photos of 23 april 2018 was given a really great help to this population, thanks to the Italian cultural association “I Luoghi dell’Abbandono”.

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