Chernobyl for refuge, from war to radiation – photo essay

Thirty-five years on from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, and despite the continued danger of radiation, Ukrainians displaced by the conflict in Donbas have come to settle in low-cost, dilapidated housing in border areas close to the exclusion zone. Photojournalist Gaelle Girbes met the people who are trying to rebuild their lives in the most unlikely of places.

On 26 April 1986, the core of reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant melted down, causing the world's biggest nuclear disaster. About 130,000 people were urgently evacuated, leaving towns and villages deserted across 2,200 sq km in the north of Ukraine. The area became a ghost region, forming the forbidden zone - estimated to be dangerous for 24,000 years according to specialists - and its adjacent regions, free to access but also contaminated.

Despite the danger of radiation, 35 years later Ukrainians are moving into dilapidated houses in the border areas of the exclusion zone. In 2014, the war in the Donbas region forced more than 1.5 million people into exile, fleeing the conflict that has been going on in the east of the country for almost eight years.

Lydia is cut off from the world. Her dogs, found by chance, are her companions, her family that help her to bear the immense loneliness in which she now lives in the village of Bazar, Jytomyr region, Ukraine