{
"authors": [
"Corey Hinderstein",
"Mariana Budjeryn",
"Olga Stefanishyna ",
"Adam Higginbotham",
"Michael Crowley"
],
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"Carnegie Endowment for International Peace"
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"primaryCenter": "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
"programAffiliation": "russia",
"programs": [
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"topics": [
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}
Chernobyl’s Legacy 40 Years On
Thu, May 7th, 2026
9:00 AM - 10:15 AM (EDT)
In Person and Live Online
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Shortly after midnight on April 26, 1986, a routine safety test at Reactor Four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant went catastrophically wrong, triggering the worst nuclear disaster in history. The meltdown and its aftermath laid bare both the extraordinary courage of first responders and the systemic failures of a Soviet system riddled with incompetence and sycophancy. In the years that followed, Chernobyl—or Chornobyl, in Ukrainian—helped galvanize the nascent Ukrainian independence movement, cast a long shadow over Ukraine’s post-Soviet nuclear disarmament negotiations with the United States, and reemerged as a chilling touchstone in 2022, when invading Russian forces recklessly occupied the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
To explore Chernobyl’s enduring legacy, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace invites you for a panel discussion with Adam Higginbotham, journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller Midnight in Chernobyl; Mariana Budjeryn, senior scholar at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and author of Inheriting the Bomb; and Corey Hinderstein, vice president for studies at Carnegie and former principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Olga Stefanishyna, will deliver opening remarks. The panel will be moderated by Michael Crowley of The New York Times.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
Event Speakers
Vice President for Studies
Corey Hinderstein is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, overseeing the Technology and International Affairs Program, the Nuclear Policy Program, and the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program.
Mariana Budjeryn
Senior Research Associate, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center
Mariana Budjeryn is a Senior Research Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. She is the author of Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023) and a winner of the 2024 William E. Colby Military Writers’ Award, the first female in the award’s 25-year history. Formerly, she held appointments as a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow with MTA and International Security Program at Belfer, a fellow at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, a visiting professor at Tufts University and Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, and as a Global Fellow with the Global Europe Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Olga Stefanishyna
Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States of America
Olga Stefanishyna was appointed as Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States of America on August 27, 2025. Before that, she served as the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and Minister of Justice of Ukraine. In her governmental role, she oversaw Ukraine’s integration efforts with the EU and NATO, shaped legal policies, and set the priorities for the Ministry of Justice. She was also a member of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. She chaired the Commission on Coordination of Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Integration, where she led the development of the adapted Annual National Program.
Adam Higginbotham
Author and Journalist
Adam Higginbotham is the author of Midnight in Chernobyl, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2019. His latest book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, was published by Avid Reader Press in May 2024. An immediate New York Times bestseller, Challenger is the winner of the 2024 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Higginbotham’s work has appeared in newspapers and magazines including The New Yorker, Wired, Smithsonian and The New York Times Magazine. He is the former US correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine and editor-in-chief of The Face.
Michael Crowley
Diplomatic Correspondent, New York Times
Michael Crowley is a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, covering the State Department and U.S. foreign policy from Washington, D.C. He has reported from nearly 50 countries, including several trips to Ukraine.