Ukraine used the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster today to renew calls for help in building a new shelter over the damaged reactor, saying the tragedy was too great for one nation to deal with.
"We have paid for the peace of the planet with the lives and health of thousands of compatriots," President Viktor Yanukovych said.
"But not a single nation, even the most powerful, can overcome the consequences of a catastrophe of such a scale by itself," he said.
Ukraine still needs to raise some £180 million for the project after an international donors conference earlier this month.
Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians - the three nations most affected by Chernobyl - began marking the anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster in the early hours of today.
In Kiev Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill led a memorial ceremony outside a monument to workers and firefighters who were sent to the station immediately after one of the reactors exploded and who died shortly after from acute radiation poisoning.
Black-clad Orthodox priests sang hymns, Ukrainians lit thin wax candles and a bell tolled 25 times for the years that have passed since the disaster.
"The world had not known a catastrophe in peaceful times that could be compared to what happened in Chernobyl," said Mr Kirill, who was accompanied by Ukraine's Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and other officials.
"It's hard to say how this catastrophe would have ended if it hadn't been for the people, including those whose names we have just remembered in prayer," he said in an emotional tribute to those who perished.
The memorial service started at 1am, around the time of the blast on April 26, 1986, that spewed a cloud of radioactive fallout over much of Europe and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes in the most heavily hit areas in Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia.
The explosion released about 400 times more radiation than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Hundreds of thousands were made ill and once-pristine forests and farmland still remain contaminated.
Several hundred Ukrainians, mostly widows of plant workers and those sent in to deal with the disaster, attended the service to pay their respects to their loved ones and colleagues. Teary-eyed, they lit candles, stood in silence and crossed themselves to the sound of Orthodox chants.
"Our lives turned around 360 degrees," said Larisa Demchenko, 64. She and her husband both worked at the plant, and he died nine years ago from cancer linked to Chernobyl radiation.
"It was a wonderful town, a wonderful job, wonderful people. It was our youth. Then it all collapsed," she said. "If only you knew how much our hearts ache for our children, how many sick grandchildren there are, how many couples without kids.