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Oleksiy Ananenko
Олексій Ананенко
Ananenko in 2011
Born	(1959-10-13) 13 October 1959 (age 65) Inta, Komi ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Awards	Hero of Ukraine

Oleksiy Mykhailovych Ananenko (Ukrainian: Олексій Михайлович Ананенко; born 13 October 1959) is a Ukrainian mechanical engineer who worked at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

After the Chernobyl disaster, he was part of the three-man "suicide squad"^[1] that drained the steam suppression pools under the fourth reactor building, since he was very familiar with the layout of the building. Although his feat was quickly forgotten in the wake of the disaster, he was awarded the Order for Courage in 2018 and the title Hero of Ukraine in 2019.^[2][3][4][5]

Despite media reports claiming the three men died of radiation poisoning shortly after the incident, he survived and lives in Kyiv as of 2019.^[6]

Ananenko was portrayed by Baltasar Breki Samper in the Sky/HBO miniseries Chernobyl (2019).

• Valery Bespalov
• Boris Baranov

• 'I'm no hero' says Chernobyl diver portrayed in hit TV series (AFP video)