The Chernobyl disaster became a turning point for Ukrainian independence. By the ’90s, the Soviet industrial framework was falling apart. Household financial savings were wiped out by hyperinflation. Meanwhile, a Chernobyl health crisis was unfolding as people who developed cancers, heart and autoimmune problems, and other disorders poured into clinics. They were looking for relief from ills that they claimed were related to Chernobyl, but such connections were dismissed by international scientific experts and their Soviet counterparts because the patients had little or no documentation of their exposure. They were faced with an impossible burden of proof, even as the devastating public-health consequences of the disaster were downplayed.

In taking over Chernobyl, Russia is implicitly threatening to cause all that pain all over again. The 15 active, aging nuclear reactors that are spread around Ukraine were not built to withstand an all-out military invasion. Some can survive airplane crashes, but probably not inadvertent strikes from missiles or artillery. Nor can they ward off a destabilizing cyberattack, or protect crucial staff members from being held hostage, as the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy said the Russian army has done at Chernobyl. Some of those staff may decide to flee due to threats of violence. An invading military, in control of those reactors, could dial up the threat of nuclear terror to engage in a wider threat of nuclear blackmail.

Russian control of Ukraine’s functioning and decommissioned nuclear power plants would be, in the words of one analyst, like having “nuclear warfare without bombs” if these plants were to be tampered with.