Boris Baranov

Lore & Background

Baranov was born in Sozinovy in Kirov Oblast. After army service he moved to the Ukrainian republic and worked from 1966 to 1976 at the Kryvyi Rih Metallurgical Plant, rising to shift supervisor, while studying heat and power engineering in Kharkiv; he graduated in 1974. He joined the Chernobyl plant in 1976. That same year his wife died, leaving him to raise a young daughter and son alone.

Once the fire was out, officials feared that molten material would reach the bubbler pools below the reactor and cause a steam explosion. They decided to drain the pools through sluice gates whose valves sat in a flooded annex.

Baranov and two engineers who knew where the valves were went in on May 7 wearing diving suits and respirators and carrying dosimeters. They followed the pipes by searchlight and opened the gates. Fire brigade pumps then removed 20,000 t of water, finishing by May 8.

Reader's Guide

The fear behind the mission turned out to be unfounded: the molten material had already begun dripping into the pools, where it formed a pumice that floated on the water. Officials did not know this at the time.

All three men were volunteers, and the team was unofficially called the suicide squad. Baranov lived for almost 20 years after the disaster. He died of a heart attack in Kyiv on 6 April 2005, aged 64, and was posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine in 2019.

In the 2019 Sky/HBO miniseries Chernobyl, a dramatisation, he is portrayed by Oscar Giese.

Did You Know?

• The water in parts of the passage stood at knee level.
• His father died during World War II.