Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes is a documentary built on footage taken from Ukraine and Russia around the time of the 1986 nuclear disaster. While the footage and interviews were interesting, there was a part of the documentary that felt wrong.
The makers of the documentary focused on the lies the government of the Soviet Union told the public and the government’s willingness to put its reputation over the lives of the people was over the top. While it’s totally true that the government lied and that the lives of the people living in the area and those brought in to clean up didn’t matter to the government, it’s just as true that the government of America has always lied to the American people. The idea that the government of the Soviet Union put reputation over lives is not different from the government of America developing policy resulting in eugenics to keep corporate profits rising during a pandemic.
The documentary was worth watching. If you have an interest in what happened in Chernobyl, you will enjoy it. But the misguided political focus was distracting and disappointing to me.