Ukraine ousted Khrushchev and became the Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982. Many prominent Soviet sports players, scientists, and artists came from Ukraine. On 26 April 1986, a reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, resulting in the Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history. This was the only accident to receive the highest possible rating of 7 by the International Nuclear Event Scale, indicating a "major accident", until the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011. At the time of the accident, 7 million people lived in the contaminated territories, including 2.2 million in Ukraine. After the
Czechs in Ukraine Czechs in Ukraine Czechs in Ukraine, often known as Volhynian Czechs (Czech: "Volyňští Češi"), are ethnic Czechs or their descendants settled mostly in the Volhynia region of Ukraine, in the second half of the 19th century. Between 1868 and 1880, almost 16,000 Czechs left Austria-Hungary for the Russian Empire. The reasons for their departure were the difficult living conditions in the Czech lands, and the rumors of prosperity in the Russian realm, where there was a large amount of unused agricultural land. After the collapse of the Polish January Uprising against Russian rule (Volhynia was part of Poland prior to