Gone to the dogs 

The unexpected relationship between hundreds of stray dogs and human guards in the Exclusion Zone surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is the focus of new research by a University of Cambridge academic, thirty-five years after the accident left an area of 1,000 sq. miles uninhabitable for many years.

During his research, Jonathon Turnbull, a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography, gave several disposable cameras to checkpoint guards in the Exclusion Zone and one to a shopkeeper working in a convenience store for workers, encouraging them to take pictures of their everyday lives with the dogs. He later followed up with interviews and phone calls with the photographers. 

The purpose? To begin to understand their relationships with the stray dogs, which are suspected to have descended from the hundreds of family pets abandoned in the scramble to leave the area around Chernobyl following the release of radioactive material in April 1986 — the worst nuclear disaster in history. 

In the years since the disaster, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – an area of 4,200km2 crossing Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus – has become not only a destination for keen adventure seekers, but also, if accidentally, a haven for wildlife according to some scientists.

Many of the domestic animals that were left behind were killed by Soviet soldiers to help prevent the spread of contamination, but some hid and survived and now roam the Zone 35 years later. According to the Clean Futures Fund (CFF), a non-governmental organisation which monitors and provides care for dogs living within the Exclusion Zone, the lifespan of a Chernobyl dog is four to five years and their “greatest threat is lack of food, water and shelter during the harsh, cold Ukrainian winters,” not radiation as one might expect.  

Today, there are over 500 dogs living at different locations around the Zone, many of whom are thought to be the descendants of the dogs left behind in 1986. After being driven out of the wilderness by hunger and predators and towards the areas where humans work, the dogs are now managed by the CFF, who control their “overpopulation” with spay/neuter programmes. 

Turnbull adds: “I think telling the stories of the guards' relationships with the dogs is really important as it gives people an idea of what everyday life looks like in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster. But more importantly, the photovoicing technique allowed them to tell their own story, rather than have it depicted by an outsider.” 

One of guards noted that his favourite photo was one which showed the dogs being fed leftover food, and another said, “I made a house […] for the dogs to have a place to hide from snow and rain.” What is shown here is the hospitality given to the dogs by the guards despite a worker noting “they are not our dogs personally.” 

The dogs’ “wildness” and “territoriality” is discussed by the guards, too, with the shop worker noting that “the dogs get jealous when new dogs arrive,” and that they will fiercely defend their territory. Yet another guard asks, “why are they wild?” He paints a picture that could be seen in homes with dogs across the world: “they live here, they communicate with tourists […] they even learned commands from an early age.” The same guard went on to point out that if the dogs were indeed wild, they could run away and live elsewhere at any time, yet they choose not to.  

The dogs seem to have a choice, and that choice is to stay close to food, shelter and company. 

While parts of the landscape will remain uninhabitable for potentially up to 20,000 years, it is clear that for some of the guards and workers in the Zone, the dogs provide something resembling a sense of home and normality in what has been described as an “apocalyptic Eden.”  

The Zone itself has iconic status within popular culture and has become a tourist destination for those wanting to see the abandoned city of Pripyat. The dogs themselves have now become quite the attraction, too, gaining large followers on social media sites such as Instagram. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the dogs were livestreamed to paying customers on Airbnb to much success.    

As part of his continued research, Jonathon is working on a film about the dogs - Собаки Що Вижили / The Dogs That Survived – with a Ukrainian team including director Nikita Zarkh,  producer Eugene Rachkovsky of Tabor production company, and designer Karolina Uskakovych. The film will tell the story of the dogs as the protagonists and main characters, showing what life looks like for them in the Zone. “Kind of like Tarkovsky's Stalker but from the dogs' perspective,” Turnbull explains. 

The relationships between the checkpoint guards and the dogs allow the Chernobyl zone to be described on an everyday level from the perspectives of those who spend the most time there. “It cuts across grand accounts that depict the zone as either a wasteland or a flourishing nature reserve, drawing attention to the ways in which life continues in spaces of disaster and ruin,” Turnbull adds. Chernobyl, as his research clearly shows, is an area where life can prevail against all odds.