MOSCOW — Gen. Nikolai T. Antoshkin, the commander of a perilous helicopter firefighting operation in which he and other pilots braved radiation exposure to contain the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, died on Sunday. He died after a “difficult illness,” according to a statement by Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s Parliament, where General Antoshkin had been a deputy for the ruling party, United Russia, since 2014. Sergei Nevrov, the head of the party’s faction in Parliament, said the general had been hospitalized with Covid-19. General Antoshkin was a leader of the so-called liquidators, the hastily assembled teams of military and civilian workers sent to the Chernobyl disaster site. Braving enormous risks, they became heroes and are now widely revered in Russia for preventing the crisis from becoming worse.

Source: New York Times January 17, 2021 18:35 UTC