HBO's miniseries Chernobyl has become the highest-rated show in television history on IMDb, reaching an unprecedented 9.7/10, based on audience voting.
Despite this, in recent days there have been reactions because there were no black actors in the episodes being shown. Reactions that started from Twitter, specifically from screenwriter Karla Marie Sweet, with the production responding that there were only white people in Ukraine and the city of Pripyat and the script wanted to stay absolutely true to reality.
However, the truth is that at least one black soldier, of Russian origin, was involved in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
The Russian media today highlight the almost unknown story of a Russian citizen named Igor Anatolyevich Khiryak who was born in 1967.
He lives in Cherepovets, a town 500 kilometers north of Moscow. In 1985 he began serving his term and took part in the evacuation of the city of Pripyat on April 27, 1986.
In 2016, on the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Khiryak uploaded photos of himself from 1986 to the Russian social networking site VKontakte.
Russian-born Khiryak was a member of Army Engineer Unit 75110 that dropped pontoons on May 2, 1986 to facilitate the evacuation of the city after the nuclear reactor meltdown.
Colonel Osipov's men entered the city without weapons, only in uniforms and gas masks, and settled just four kilometers from the factory.
For their services they were all awarded a medal of valor by the Russian state.
Today Khiryak is employed as a farmer on his farm and lives in the Cherepovets region.
He has even played small roles in independent film productions in his country and in historical documentaries.
Khiryak's origin has not been revealed as he has refused to speak to the media in his country.
The series records with great fidelity what happened during the worst nuclear accident that has ever happened, but also what followed, capturing also the surrounding political atmosphere of the time.