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Ukraines official Twitter account is no stranger to memes.Courtesy of Adult Swim

When a massive cyberattack hit Ukraines airport, government agencies, and national bank in early June, the countrys official Twitter account, @Ukraine , responded with a GIF. Some of our gov agencies, private firms were hit by a virus. No need to panic, were putting our utmost efforts to tackle the issue, read the tweet, which was accompanied by an illustrated GIF of a dog sitting in a room ablaze, drinking coffee, saying This is fine.

The cartoon, a meme generally used to signify disastrous government inaction, seemed to send the wrong message: Guys youre doing this meme thing wrong, one journalist replied on Twitter.

But the oddball tweet had the intended effect: it garnered 7,800 retweets, 10,600 likes, and brought the accounts follower count to 42,000 (its now 45,400). And it wasn't unique: Since May 2016, @Ukraine has been engaging in twiplomacy in a similarly self-deprecating, sardonic tone, making consistent use of GIFs and emoji. Some tweets highlight Ukraines natural beauty and national holidays (#BeautifulUkraine), while others enter the diplomatic fray, at times sarcastically trolling official Russian accounts (#DecommunizationBenefits) and giddily @ing friendlier nations (Hey @Nigeria!).

Whos behind it? Fortune tracked down the team with the gumption to casually refer to a "bromance" Sweden, and blatantly troll Russian accounts. They are Yarema Dukh, 30, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenkos press attach, Oleg Naumenko, 24, a Cambridge graduate who helped build the Ukrainian governments communications team before joining the private sector, and Artem Zhukov, who coordinates strategic digital communications for the presidential administration. All three became politically active during Ukraines Maidan Revolution three years ago, joining Poroshenkos new administrationwhich took office with the aim of reforming and modernizing the country.

Dukh registered the account after discovering Canadas official accounts ( @Canada and, in French, @AuCanada ), which advertise the nations abundant natural beauty, and he thought Ukraine should have a similar outlet. The effort to turn a faceless institutionbe it a country or companyinto a personable online presence will be familiar to anyone who follows U.S. corporate accountssee Wendys , Square, and Delta . But for a nation at war, the stakes are considerably higher.

Throughout much Ukraine's long-running conflict with Russia, Russian leadership repeatedly insisted the country did not have troops in Ukraine. Details have only recently started to reach the public. On Twitter, though, @Ukraine is spreading the word, and periodically reminds its followers of the wars ongoing toll. That includes calling out accounts like @Russia , a promotional Twitter feed run by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The feeds most famous clash came this spring. During a speech in Paris, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that French-Russian relations date back to an 11th century French queen whom he called Russian Ani. @Ukraine promptly responded, clarifying that Russian Ani was in fact Anne de Kiev, who married French King Henry I in 1051, when Moscow did not yet exist.

We are proud of our common history...which should unite our nations, not divide us, @Russia shot back, prompting to @Ukraine to respond with a Simpsons GIF equating Russia and the Soviet Union, adding, You really dont change, do you?

The levity was a conscious choice for @Ukraine's creators. Humour, even the sardonic kind, is the only thing that allows us to talk about hard topics and see the bright side even in the most tragic situations, Naumenko says.

The tweets are also intended to counterbalance the Russian messaging and propaganda that has become increasingly pervasive on social media sites. At the very beginning, @Russia tweeted something like, Welcome to Crimea, a beautiful Russian land, recalled Dukh. Crimea was a part of Ukraine Russia forcibly annexed in 2014. We reply to their claims, and we always get more likes and retweets than them.

On Twitter, at least, Ukraine can reclaim lost ground in late June, Dukh registered the @Crimea handle. When the official Twitter of the Russian Embassy to the U.S. tweeted, Goodnight America! #VisitRussia #travel #Crimea, @Crimea replied, If youre a tomb raider, this could be a good movie. But sanctions & isolation is the only prize you get for violating int law, accompanied by a GIF of a gun-toting Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft (in which she is, presumably, breaking into UNESCO World Heritage sites).

Soon, Dukh hopes, every Ukrainian region will have its own official account. @Ukraine is already broadcasting the countrys latest diplomatic news. It celebrated the European Parliaments approval of visa-free travel to the EU with a Minions GIF, and congratulating Lithuania on its independence day with a GIF of a jubilant Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson, on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. It can also strike a somber tone, at times reminding followers of how many Ukrainian servicemen have lost their lives at war in the east, and of Russias Crimea annexation.

But @Ukraine was not created solely to respond to Russian propaganda or aggression. Its primary focus is still to promote a positive image of the country, and to provide a means of reaching out to fellow nations. Ukrainians are extremely open-minded and friendly nation with a great sense of humor. Twitter is just the mirror, Zhukov says.

Its a good opportunity for international interaction, Dukh wrote in an email. Not necessarily to settle beef with Russia, but to have a nice exchange with friendly countries like Poland, Israel, Canada or Lithuaniawe're happy to have some banter and to raise a glass of e-wine! 🙂

The feed has been remarkably, if haphazardly, successful at doing so, one follower at a time. It gives a new, unconventional perspective on Ukraine and puts the country on the map of English-speaking world, says Dukh. Even if you need to use a few memes and Simpsons GIFs to do so.

A version of this article appears in the Aug. 1, 2017 issue of Fortune with the headline "First the World War, Now the Flame War."

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Meet the Millennials Who Started Ukraine's Twitter War With Russia - Fortune

Angelina Diash in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2010 (Terrell Jermaine Starr)

Angelina Diash is a black woman, a native-born Ukrainian patriot.

She loves her country but hates the direction in which its headed. Corruption is rampant. The leadership talks a good game about democracy, but at times, she says it feels like a dictatorship. Though with a new, western government in office, Diash felt she at least had freedom of expression.

Her harsh reality check came last week when she was arrested after baring her breasts in protest during a ceremony where Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko signed documents of cooperation between their countries. Human-rights abuses are rampant in Belarus, which former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once called the last dictatorship of central Europe. Diash believed that Poroshenko didnt need to be seen shaking hands with someone most of the world thinks is a tyrant.

Diash made her way into the ceremony last Friday afternoon, bared her breasts with long live Belarus written on them and began shouting the phrase. The refrain is commonly used by the Belarusian opposition against Lukashenko. Two large men dressed in black suits quickly whisked her out of the packed ceremony as journalists snapped photos, shot video and looked on.

Lukashenko and Poroshenko grinned calmly. Watch the video of Diashs protest for yourself:

After sharing a jail cell with three other women overnight, she was released the following morning and placed in a holding cage in court, where she heard the stiff charges against her.

At most, Diash figured shed get arrested, be slapped with a small fine and released after a few hours. Instead, she faces between two and five years in prison for hooliganism with aggravating circumstances, according to the Kyiv Post. The police allege that she resisted arrest as she was carried out of the ceremony, thus the stiff jail time. Diash denies that claim.

Its not normal, she said. Im really frustrated. [Ukraine] wants to move toward Europe. The United States supports us. We want democracy to develop in our country, but our authorities show that they are not ready. Dont know whats happening with them. Im really surprised.

Diash is part of a feminist group called Femen whose members are known for staging protests by showing their breasts. Founded in Ukraine in 2008, the group of sextremists, as they are called, made a name for themselves protesting against the Ukrainian and Russian governments in this manner. Their tactics drew reactions ranging from curiosity to out right hostility. Though as the group continued their protests and gained international coverage, the Ukrainian government began cracking down on them, and its key members were forced out of Ukraine. Femen is now based in Paris, France.

I met Angelina in Ukraine during my Fulbright program in 2009, and she participated in my Black Women in Ukraine Photo Project, which you can find here. Diash has always been passionate about political and social justice issues in her country and has never been shy about discussing the racism she deals with.

And that is what makes Diashs current case so unique: She is a black woman in Ukraine fighting against what she feels is creeping authoritarian rule, all while fighting against racism from her own people. When news of her arrest hit social media, the language people used toward her wasnt pretty.

She says some of the comments included, Why is a black monkey protesting in our country? and of course, the universal slur for black people, nigger.

Its really frustrating that people judge me by the color of my skin, she said. Theres not a lot of black people in Ukraine, especially those who were born here.

Diash was born in western Ukraine to a Ukrainian mother and an Angolan father who studied in Ukraine during the 1980s on a Soviet scholarship. In her small town, she was one of a few black kids, and their classmates were quite cruel. Schoolchildren would tell them they should feel cold because they were outside of Africa. They were constantly called Negros.

As hurtful as the taunts were, Diash didnt allow it to break her spirit. In 2009, she sat through a college lecture where a professor said that mixed-race children had a bad gene that made them criminals. Worst of all, the professor was her adviser and had to sign off on her graduation papers. Furious, Diash stormed to the professors office and demanded that she explain the science behind her logic. Of course, the professor could not.

When the Euromaidan protests against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych took place at the end of 2013, Diash was on the streets in the freezing cold with millions of other Ukrainians demanding a new government. Government forces shot at protesters, killing dozens. When Yanukovych fled to Russia and a more western-minded leadership took over, Diash was optimistic that the new government would transition the country out of its authoritarian past.

But as I see, its not true, she said. And I do not know why all of those people were dying and standing in the rain. And now they want to put me in the prison. I made a protest action, she added, emphasizing that she was peaceful and feels the charges against her are extreme.

During our 30-minute conversation on Facebook video, Angelina sounded confident, but she admitted she is very scared and doesnt want to go to prison.

Her mother supports her activism but was reduced to tears after realizing her daughter could get five years for a protest that lasted less than 20 seconds. Diash has never traveled outside of Ukraine. Her first trip abroad was supposed to be for her sisters wedding in Chicago in September, but her passport has been confiscated, and her travel is reduced to Kyiv.

She doesnt know her court date, which is further exacerbating her anxiety. It is Diashs hope that the case will be dismissed soon and shell be able to see her sister, whom she hasnt seen in over a year.

I asked her if she regrets the protest and if shed do it over again. Without hesitation, she said yes to doing it over. Even though many Ukrainians do not see her as one of their own, Diash is resolute. Ukraine is her country, and she doesnt plan on leaving. She is a black feminist Ukrainian patriot who risked her life protesting with millions of other Ukrainians for a better future. Diash wont abandon her country noweven if it means serving prison time.

If she is thrown in prison, Diash says it will prove that Ukraine is not the free and open society it claims to be.

It will really show how truly our country is moving towards democracy, Diash said. And [it will prove] how interested the authorities are in being in Europe and being a normal country.

Editors note: We have reached out to the Ukrainian National Police and Diashs lawyer for comment and will update this article with their remarks.

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Black Ukrainian Woman Faces 5 Years In Prison After Baring Breasts During Protest - The Root

There was a time when Mikheil Saakashvili was seen as the Wests great hope for reform in the former Soviet Union.

But since Thursday, he has had a more pressing problem: He is a man without a country.

He was in New York when he learned that Ukraine, his adoptive home, had stripped him of his citizenship. He had already lost his citizenship in his native Georgia, where he was once president.

"I have only one citizenship, that of Ukraine, and I will not be deprived of it," he said Friday, vowing to return to the country where until last year he had been the governor of the southern port city of Odessa and mobilize his supporters.

The Ukrainian migration service said in a statement that the decision was made after it was discovered that Saakashvili had supplied false information about pending corruption charges in Georgia when he filed citizen registration papers in 2015.

But Saakashvili, who has said the charges in Georgia are politically motivated, blamed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for the decision to leave him stateless.

"Poroshenko decided to deprive me of my citizenship in an underhanded way, while I am out of the country!" Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page.

Saakashvili, 49, was born in Georgia and went on to lead the country in a bloodless Rose Revolution to overthrow a Soviet-era president in 2003. He was elected president the next year and earned a reputation for implementing reforms in Georgia that forced out criminal gangs and corruption.

During his second term, Saakashvili fell out of favor as critics accused him of consolidating his power. He fled the country in 2013, did a stint as a professor at Tufts University in Boston and eventually landed in Ukraine, where the post-Soviet nation was undergoing its own revolution.

Mass street demonstrations in the Kiev, Ukraines capital, led to the 2014 ousting of Kremlin-favored President Viktor Yanukovych, who is currently on trial in absentia on corruption-related charges. Russia, angered by pro-Western popular revolt in Ukraine, annexed Crimea in 2014. A war with pro-Russia separatist militias in eastern Ukraine followed.

Poroshenko, who was elected Ukraines president in 2014, invited the Western-educated Saakashvili to become the governor of Odessa, where corruption and criminal gangs were notorious. The two men had been university classmates in Kiev.

Poroshenko granted him Ukrainian citizenship in 2015, prompting Georgia to take away his citizenship.

As Odessa governor, Saakashvili soon ran up against Ukraines entrenched oligarchies, which pushed back on his attempts to break up monopolies.

Saakashvili blamed the government in Kiev for stalling on reforms that were both needed to move the country out of its post-Soviet haze and required by international donors, who were banking on Ukraines pro-Western stance.

Saakashvili announced he was resigning as Odessa governor in November in a fiery speech in which he accused Poroshenko of dishonesty and Ukraine's central government of sabotaging his efforts to implement crucial reforms.

"How much can you lie and cheat?" Saakashvili, looking straight into news cameras, asked the Ukrainian president.

Saakashvili proceeded to start his own political movement of people who opposed to Poroshenkos ruling party and advocated for Western standards of rule of law and democracy.

Still, current opinion polls show popular support for Saakashvilis movement at less than 2%.

Saakashvili said the Ukrainian governments move to strip his citizenship is part of a worrying trend in Ukraine.

"I am being subjected to the same approaches that are used by Ukraine's prosecutors or bureaucrats against regular Ukrainians, whose rights are spat upon," Saakashvili said in a video posted on his Facebook page.

Balazs Jarabik, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that by eliminating Saakashvili as an opposition force, Poroshenko is narrowing the competition ahead of the 2019 presidential election.

What Poroshenko is doing is consolidating his power to make sure he is reelected, he said.

A recent opinion poll showed that only 11.6% of voters support Poroshenko, whose office declined to comment Friday.

Though the United States and European leaders have thrown their support behind the democratic and economic reforms Ukraine promised after the Maidan revolution, change has been frustratingly slow for Ukrainians. The average monthly salary still hovers around $263. Corruption still permeates Ukrainian bureaucracy, and oligarchs still dominate the ruling elite.

Poroshenko, himself a tycoon in the candy industry, has blamed the slow progress on the ongoing war in the east, which has claimed more than 10,000 lives, and Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The European Union recently granted visa-free travel to Ukrainians in what many saw as a sign of good faith that Ukraine was committed to democracy.

So far, the West has remained silent on Saakashvili losing his citizenship.

Sergei Solodkyy, an expert on international affairs at the World Policy Institute, a think tank in Kiev, said the move will be seen as a gift to the Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government, which has had an extremely contentious relationship with Saakashvili since 2008, when Russia sent troops to back a revolt in northern Georgia.

Saakashvili has been a fierce critic of Putin's autocratic style of governing.

Putin was afraid that this virus of democracy would come into Russia would destroy the regime of Putin, Solodykyy said. If Ukraine demonstrations negative trends leaning toward autocratic rule, it will demonstrate to Putin that democracy is not possible in Ukraine.

sabra.ayres@latimes.com

Twitter: @sabraayres

Ayres is a special correspondent.

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Ukraine strips Saakashvili of his citizenship, leaving the hero of the Rose Revolution without a country - Los Angeles Times

A new Canada-Ukraine trade deal will help bolster regional security and boost the exchange of clean power and energy efficiency technologies between the two countries, says Ukraine's ambassador.

Andriy Shevchenko said July 28 that the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement, signed last year and set to take effect Tuesday, will provide a "security spillover" effect, fostering a more sustainable economy that has a better chance of supporting a lasting peace down the road.

"We see Ukraine as a new frontier of the free world," said the ambassador at a media briefing at his embassy in Ottawa.

The United States recently appointed a special envoy for Ukraine to help end the war between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists, according to Radio Free Europe. Kurt Volker said July 23 that "the level of ceasefire violations on (a) daily basis is astonishing and that "this is not a frozen conflict, this is a hot war.

The American position in the region is especially relevant now that a new round of sanctions driven by the U.S. Congress is "intent on punishing Russia for its meddling in last years [U.S.] presidential election," the New York Times reported.

The sanctions would "almost surely" affect the Russia-Germany pipeline Nord Stream 2 which would carry Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine, the newspaper wrote. There has long been an interest in Canada in replacing Russia as Europes gas supplier, although the country is still expected to dominate the region for decades.

The Canadian Armed Forces' Operation Unifier, which is deployed to Ukraine until March 2019, has trained more than 4,780 Ukrainian soldiers as of July 1, 2017, according to the Department of National Defence.

Meanwhile, Canada is hoping that the trade deal will help support economic reform and development in Ukraine. We hope it will pave the way for long-term security and stability, said David Usher, director general for trade negotiations at Global Affairs Canada, who sat next to the ambassador at the briefing.

Canada's foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland is of Ukrainian heritage and is considered to be a critic of Russia. Freeland is part of a list of Canadian politicians barred from entering the country that also includes Official Opposition leader Andrew Scheer.

The new trade deal comes into force on Aug. 1, at which point import duties for 72 per cent of Canadian goods will be eliminated, said the ambassador, including for seafood, grain crops, peanuts, chocolates, juices and other products.

Duties on a further 27 per cent will be eliminated over the seven-year period, he said, and both governments expect 98 to 99 per cent of tariffs in either direction to be lifted after seven years.

Paul Darby, program director for the Canada Ukraine Trade and Investment Support project, said at the briefing that four sectors come out as big winners in the deal.

These are: fish, especially frozen and crustaceans like lobster; pharmaceuticals, drugs and chemicals; transportation machinery; and electrical machinery such as aircraft engines.

He also noted the agreement does not yet have an investment chapter, which will be negotiated over the next two to three years.

Asked by National Observer about the deals environmental standards, Shevchenko said the two countries share many pieces of the progressive agenda.

Environment and climate change is where we're on the same page, he said. This is one of the fields where we can learn a lot from Canada, whether we're talking about energy efficiency, how to fight pollution, or new sources of energy."

The environmental chapter assures that neither country will lower their environmental standards to promote trade or investment, said Usher. This is subject to dispute settlement, he said, if Ukraine believes that Canada isn't following this provision, for example.

"In this particular issue, Canada really took a lead during the negotiations," said the ambassador. "This is one of the fields where there are a lot of benefits."

In recent years, Canada and the U.S. have both deployed geological survey teams, including representatives from industry, to evaluate Ukraine's energy resources and its potential for growth in areas such as fracking. This strategy could also allow European countries to diversify their sources of energy and reduce dependence on Russia.

"Oil and gas, and in particular unconventional (shale) extraction, continues to be a sector of interest for Canadian companies who have capacity in exploration, equipment and services," says Global Affairs Canada in its 2015-17 market access plan for Ukraine.

"Opportunity exists for exports of equipment (drilling) and services/technologies, especially horizontal onshore and offshore drilling, technologies for reviving exhausted fields, on-site laboratory services, and investment projects."

Marc-Andr Poirier, who works for Trade Minister Franois-Philippe Champagne and was also present at the briefing, said a formal reception to launch the deal's implementation will occur Aug. 8 in Toronto in partnership with the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce.

Also sitting in on the briefing was Ukrainian first secretary Zoriana Stsiban, Ukrainian trade commissioner Oleh Khavroniuk, Brooke Davis in Global Affairs Canada's trade negotiations branch and GAC's Daniel Zaharychuk, who works on commercial services for Eastern Europe.

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Ukraine, Canada 'on the same page' on climate change, ambassador says - National Observer

By Cheryl L. Reed By Cheryl L. Reed July 27 at 4:02 PM

The button that could have started a nuclear holocaust is gray not red.

I learned this after climbing into a nuclear rocket command silo, 12 floors below ground, and sitting in the same green chair at the same yellow, metal console at which former Soviet officers once presided. Here, they practiced entering secret codes into their gray keyboards, pushing the launch button and turning a key all within seven seconds to fire up to 10 ballistic missiles. The officers never knew what day their practice codes might become real, nor did they know their targets.

This base in Pervomaysk, Ukraine about a four-hour drive from Kiev once had 86 intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of destroying cities in Europe and the United States. Though the nuclear warheads have been removed, the command silo with much of its equipment, giant trucks that carried the rockets to the base and an empty silo were preserved so that people could see what had been secretly going on at nuclear missile bases in the former Soviet Union. The museums collection includes the R-12/SS-4 Sandal missile similar to those involved in the Cuban missile crisis and the RS-20A/SS-18 Satan, the versions of which had several hundred times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

This is what the tourists come to see, said Igor Bodnarchuk, a tour guide for Solo East Travel, a Kiev company that specializes in tours of Soviet ruins. What else do we have to offer?

Tourists go to Paris to marvel at the majesty of the Eiffel Tower, to Rome to stroll the cobbled streets of the Vatican, to Moscow to behold the magnificent domes of Red Square. And while Ukraine has its own plethora of domed cathedrals, including monasteries with underground caves, thousands of tourists are trekking to this country for a uniquely Soviet experience. Here, they stand outside an exploded nuclear reactor at Chernobyl and rifle through the remains of a nearby abandoned city Geiger counter in hand. In Chernobyls shadow, they marvel at the giant Moscow Eye, an anti-ballistic-missile detector that rises 50 stories high and looks like a giant roller coaster.

Every day, a handful of travel companies ferry mostly foreigners to Chernobyls 19-mile exclusion zone. In 2016, Solo East Travel hauled 7,500 people there, up from only one trip in 2000.

It used to be sort of extreme travel, said Sergei Ivanchuk of Solo East Travel. You were very brave to go to Chernobyl in 2000. Now, not so much.

Ivanchuk insists that people who go to Chernobyl are not morbid. They are intelligent people who want to learn something new, and are often interested in nuclear power, he said.

Likewise, people who venture to the missile base at Pervomaysk are interested in the Cold War. Its a place to remember like the Holocaust about a dangerous time in history and what it means to have nuclear weapons, he said.

Earlier this year, Russia deployed a new cruise missile, apparently violating its 1987 arms-control treaty with the United States. In light of that event, the Soviet ruins in Ukraine seem all the more relevant.

The day I visited the former 46th Rocket Division in Pervomaysk, silver engines gleamed in the sunlight as the temperature edged up to 22 degrees. Sticking out of the snow were missiles reminiscent of the one Major T.J. King Kong rode like a rodeo cowboy in the movie Dr. Strangelove. Nearby was a surface-to-air missile similar to the one that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in July 2014.

The museum tour guides are all former Soviet officers who once worked at the missile base. Ours, Gennadiy Fil, once manned the nuclear controls. When American tourists dallied, snapping photos of the rockets above ground, he barked: Ledz go!

Then he darted through a heavy door of a squat building, down a series of winding stairs and through an underground tunnel, navigating by memory through the narrow, 500-foot-long passageway to the control center in a silo. The narrow cylinder is suspended from the ground theoretically, to withstand the shock of a counterattack.

In six-hour shifts, Fil and another officer would descend in a tiny elevator (maximum capacity: three people) to the bottom of the silo. Stationed at metal consoles in an 11-by-11 control room, they would read secret codes from Moscow that flashed on a computer screen, then quickly tap them into a dingy yellow monitor. Then, they pressed a small, gray button and turned a key on the opposite side of the terminal to launch up to 10 nuclear rockets at once.

You dont launch just one missile, because the other side is going to shoot back and destroy you, explained Elena Smerichevskaya, our Ukrainian interpreter. An intercontinental ballistic rocket fired at New York, she explained, would take about 25 minutes to hit its target.

Fil, 55, said he never knew when he would be ordered to input real codes. It was his job, he said and shrugged. He said he had no moral objections to pushing the button. Launching nuclear missiles was a political decision, something that people on top of the ground decided, not him.

He admitted that he was scared about the possibility of nuclear war. Youd have to be crazy in the head not to be scared, he said.

But just in case Fil or a fellow officer (two officers were required to launch a rocket) refused to push their buttons, reserve officers could be called up from a compartment beneath the control center.

For officers like Fil, there were both mental and physical challenges. The compartments were hermetically sealed, and Fil said there was immense pressure on their ears. There were also concerns about the psychological impact of being isolated in the chambers. While the Soviets kept enough food and water on hand for 45 days, some men started to become batty after only two or three days inside the silo bunker, Smerichevskaya said.

While Fil is glad the world didnt implode under his watch, he said he is sad to have lost his job behind the missile controls.

In 1994, three years after Ukraine became independent, it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreed to dismantle its 1,900 Soviet missiles. At the time, Ukraine boasted the worlds third-largest stockpile of nuclear warheads after Russia and the United States. Ukraine shipped its nuclear warheads to Russia and dismantled its silos, often blowing them up or filling them with cement. The control silo at Pervomaysk was the only one spared so it could become a museum. The 46th Rocket Division, part of the 43rd Rocket Army, was disbanded in 2001.

As a child growing up in the Cold War who was taught to hide under her school desk in case of a nuclear attack, I found it surreal to meet a man who at the same time had his fingers on the triggers of the Soviet Unions nuclear warheads.

Fil shakes his head at how things have changed. I never thought Id be standing here talking to an American, he said, his eyes wide with amazement. I never thought Id be having my picture taken. That was absolutely forbidden. And now ... its okay.

The museum claims that its silos are very similar to those still in operation in Russia. The Satan missile is still part of Russias weaponry, although an improved version is set to be operational in 2018. Before Russia invaded Crimea and backed the separatists war on Ukraines eastern front, Russian soldiers frequently took their families to Pervomaysk to show them what they did at work, museum tour guides say. The missile sites in Russia remain secret.

The city of Pripyat was once a secret Soviet city, closed to anyone but workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and their families. Now the city, an hour-and-a-half drive from Kiev, is a nuclear ghost town. Forty-nine thousand people were forced to evacuate the day after Chernobyls Reactor No. 4 exploded on April 26, 1986.

Nearly all the first responders and soldiers died from radiation poisoning while trying to contain the graphite fire and the radioactive particles spewing from the destroyed reactor, explained Bodnarchuk, our tour guide. Officially, only 31 firemen and soldiers were killed. But some believe that the disaster claimed at least 10,000 lives as wind carried radioactive material into Belarus and Northern Europe.

Even though critics have said that the designs of Chernobyl are outmoded and inherently unsafe, Russia reportedly is still using 11 similar nuclear reactors.

Today, visitors can stand across the street from the damaged reactor at Chernobyl, which recently was covered by a huge, $2.3 billion shield. But the highlight of the tour is, by far, the crumbling city of Pripyat. Though tour operators are warned to stay out of Pripyats buildings, tourists routinely stomp through the city, including the hospital where dying first responders were taken.

Tourists stick their Geiger counters against tatters of clothing in the hospital lobby and watch their machines shoot up to shockingly high levels 85 microsieverts per hour. The normal range is .09 to .30 microsieverts per hour, according to the tour company. Most guides carry their own Geiger counters; many tourists come with their own.

Tour operators claim that a visit to Chernobyl is no more dangerous now than a flight from Ukraine to North America. This calculation includes spending 10 minutes in front of the burned-out reactor and no more than two hours in Pripyat.

Solo East Travel has a video that shows how it came up with such math. Those calculations, however, dont factor in hovering over a firefighters highly radioactive clothing that has been dug up from deep in the hospital. Nor do they specifically include driving through the red forest near the Chernobyl reactor where the radiation burned up all the trees, which were then bulldozed and buried. Our Geiger counters went crazy as we drove through the new-growth forest, registering 26 sieverts per hour.

Our guide tried to calm fears about our exposure to radiation by assuring us that any high levels on our body would be detected by the machines we had to pass through on the way out of Chernobyls exclusion zone. Those machines old Soviet steel contraptions that look like retro airport metal detectors hardly inspire confidence.

To amplify tourists shock, guides have embellished some of the Pripyat remains: Amid hundreds of crumbling gas masks spread over the floor of an elementary school, a baby doll has been placed on a chair wearing a gas mask. A hospital nursery has been outfitted with plastic dolls, placed in cribs with blankets, to make the scene appear even more macabre. Outside a village school building, old toys are scattered about. One-eyed teddy bears and dolls with missing limbs sit on bed springs at a village orphanage. Tables are set with plates and pots.

The most eerie scenes include an abandoned amusement park with its empty, lonely-looking Ferris wheel and bumper cars filled with leaves; a swimming pool with cracked tiles, its deep end filled with trash and an old shopping cart; school hallways cluttered with books; school desks laid out with science experiments; posters of Lenin and other Soviet leaders adorning classroom walls; and a broken baby carriage abandoned in a decaying community center.

Visitors are exhausted by the time their tour bus leaves Pripyat and turns down a one-lane road through a thick forest. Hiding there is the Moscow Eye, also known as the Russian Woodpecker, an enormous metal structure silhouetted against the sky like a vertical Stonehenge.

Using over-the-horizon radar, the Moscow Eye was the receiver for a powerful radio broadcast sent from elsewhere in Ukraine. Some said that the signals short, repetitive tapping noise sounded like a bird thus the woodpecker moniker. Others say it sounded more like a machine gun. From 1976, until it went off the air in 1989, the unexplained radio signal interfered with many broadcasts. Listeners speculated that it was a method of Soviet mind control. Only in the past three years have tourists discovered its sublime metal architecture rising from the forest floor near Chernobyl, an anachronistic remnant from a not-so-distant era.

Reed is a writer based in Syracuse. Her website is Cherylreed.net. Find her on Twitter: @JournoReed.

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A solo trip through northern Europe

Overlooked by guidebooks, Slovakia is a worthy European destination without the crowds

In Berlin, the past and present collide on a mother-son trip

Excerpt from:
In Ukraine, a radioactive nuclear ghost town near Chernobyl is a hot destination - Washington Post