was interred in two coffins, an inner one made of zinc, and an outer of wood. He was buried with full military honours alongside other Chernobyl victims in Mitinskoe Cemetery, Moscow. Personal life Vasily Ignatenko remained very close to his family throughout his life, regularly taking the train from Pripyat to visit them on weekends. He helped around the house and with garden chores during these visits, even making furniture. After the accident, his family's village was contaminated, forcing them to resettle elsewhere. Their house, which the family had built in 1981, burned down soon after its abandonment. From 1983, Ignatenko was married to Lyudmilla Ignatenko (born 1963; not to be confused with Ignatenko's sister of the same name). She was from central Ukraine, and worked at the confectionery shop of a factory-kitchen enterprise in Pripyat. Meeting through mutual friends at an apartment party in Pripyat, they courted and were legally married on 24 September 1983. Two separate celebrations were held for the families of both the bride and groom in their respective hometowns following a civil ceremony. After the disaster, Lyudmilla traveled to Moscow with Ignatenko's father. There, she remained at the hospital through her husband's illness, helping to care for him through his decline in health up until his death. It was she who summoned the family to Moscow by telephone as Ignatenko entered terminal decline. Vasily and Lyudmilla Ignatenko had one child following a previous unsuccessful pregnancy: Natasha Ignatenko. Reportedly born with congenital heart defects and cirrhosis of the liver, she died shortly after she was born and was buried with her father in Mitinskoe Cemetery, Moscow. As Lyudmilla was pregnant with her daughter at the time of the accident and during her husband's hospitalization, it has been speculated that her daughter's death was the result of radiation exposure from her husband. In a 1996 interview, Lyudmilla said that her baby "took the whole radioactive shock [...] She was like a lightning rod for it". However Ukrainian medical responder Alla Shapiro, in a 2019 interview with Vanity Fair, said such beliefs were false, and that once Ignatenko was showered and out of his contaminated clothing, he would not have been dangerous to others, precluding this possibility. Robert Peter Gale, an American hematologist who was directly involved in the treatment of Chernobyl radiation patients, also writes that victims were not radioactive themselves and therefore did not pose a