On the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew paid tribute to the victims of the tragedy and urged them not to forget its lessons.
He said this in a special video message to the discussion of the Kyiv security forum organized by the Arseniy Yatsenyuk Open Ukraine Foundation, NV reports.
Patriarch Bartholomew noted that the Ukrainian people have faced the worst nuclear catastrophe in history, the consequences of which "still resound in our minds and hearts."
"On this sad anniversary, we mourn the victims of the disaster, which not only spread to Ukraine's neighboring countries in the North and West but also affected the wider region in the south and east, generating waves of environmental destruction, irreversible damage to health and loss of human life," the Patriarch said.
According to him, during the 1950s and 1960s, the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes was a promising hope for humanity, but the Chernobyl tragedy "reminded us all how premature and hasty this approach and such expectations were."
In this regard, Patriarch Bartholomew stressed that humanity should never forget the tragic consequences of its own failures and learn to say "no" to technologies with harmful effects on the environment.
"As the Mother Church of our beloved Ukrainian people, we pray with all our hearts that the memory of Chernobyl will not be in vain," he addressed the Ukrainians.