Pripyat, also known as Prypiat, is an abandoned industrial city in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, located near the border with Belarus. Named after the nearby river, Pripyat, it was founded on 4 February 1970 as the ninth atomgrad ("atom city"), a type of closed city in the Soviet Union that housed nuclear workers. Residents of Pripyat worked at the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, north of the abandoned city of Chernobyl, after which the power plant was named.[3] Pripyat was officially proclaimed a city in 1979 and had ballooned to a population of 49,360[4] by the time it was evacuated on the afternoon of 27 April 1986, one day after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.[5]
Although it is located in Vyshhorod Raion, the abandoned municipality is administered directly from the capital of Kyiv. Pripyat is supervised by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine which manages activities for the entire Chernobyl exclusion zone. Following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the entire population of Pripyat was moved to the purpose-built city of Slavutych