The Soviet Union collapsed overnight more than two decades ago. In Belarus, which suffered most in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, the sudden demise of the nuclear superpower five years later left enough lethal legacy of other types to endanger the lives of several future generations.

In a forest near the village of Savichi, some 160 km (100 miles) southwest of Minsk, one of these Soviet-era time bombs is still ticking. Here, under a thin layer of ground, hundreds of tons of highly toxic Soviet-made pesticides are stored in leaky dumps.

Located just 3 km (2 miles) from a busy motorway, the dump spreads the pungent smell of chemicals far beyond its perimeter marked by rows of barbed wire. The poisonous substances hastily buried here back in the 1960-70s include the dreaded dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, more widely known as DDT, banned worldwide for several decades because it can cause cancer in humans.

Belarus’s independence has given a new lease on life to places like Savichi, a forlorn area marked with signs reading: “Danger. Toxic chemicals.” A $5.5 million U.S. grant helps finance work aimed to clean up the pesticide disposal site. People clad in white chemical protection overalls and wearing gas masks load a greyish mixture of soil and chemicals leaked from rusty barrels into new blue-colored 70-kg (154 pound) plastic containers.

Last year, workers loaded and sent a total of around 950 tons of the toxic substance to Germany for environmentally safe processing. This year they are completing work at this old dump, having packed more than 600 tons of pesticides in more than 9,000 containers.

This project is coming to an end but officials say Belarus’s land holds several more huge Soviet-era dumps of toxic pesticides. And the time bombs continue ticking.

To Vladimir Ablogin, it may still seem like a fairy tale, but as he touches his new squeezebox “garmoshka” accordion, which had covered thousands of miles to find him in his dilapidated wood hut, he knows what has happened is real.

I arrived in his run-of-the-mill Russian village in the Smolensk region at Belarus’s border on an early December morning to take pictures of local peasants voting in Russia’s parliamentary election. Looking like it was still from the Soviet era, the election day soon turned into a rare holiday in this backwater settlement, which was until recently prosaically named “Gryaz” (Mud).

Paying little heed to my presence and already warmed up with Russia’s national tipple, a bare-footed Ablogin sat on a bed in his higgledy-piggledy home, playing a traditional Russian “garmoshka” button accordion to amuse his audience of several women and men.

He played his scarred and worn-out folk instrument adroitly, running his fingers down its buttons and squeezing joyous tunes out of its tired bellows. Displaying no avid interest in the vote — now overshadowed by Ablogin’s improvised show — his few spectators quickly ticked their ballot papers and cast them in a portable ballot box standing nearby.

The photographic assignment suddenly continued the next day as Jill Downing, Reuters Pictures Sales Specialist, forwarded me a letter from Maddalena Bucher in Britain, who spotted Ablogin’s picture.

“I saw the photo in The Guardian of Mr. Ablogin playing his run down squeeze box in Gryaz at the pre election polls. I felt for him and thought of the beautiful squeeze box that I had here and stayed untouched in its box since 2003, the year my husband Robert died in an accident,” Maddalena wrote.

Her husband Robert – “a translator and interpreter during the day and a musician at night” – died on Valentine’s Day in 2003 in an accident, Maddalena wrote. “He loved music and taught his four children (Francesca, Ottavia, Fabrizio and Stefano) to play various instruments. With Robert’s death, music in this house has not been the same.”

With the help of several enthusiasts and with some serious logistics involved, the smart-looking Schwyzerörgeli – the Swiss name for this type of the folk accordion – finally made its long journey from foggy Albion to the Reuters office in snow-clad Moscow. Reuters driver Sergei Zhakov brought the present to Ablogin’s village, which had already been betting on whether it would reach the forest wilderness at all.

“I was really moved by this whole story,” said Vladimir, tenderly touching the new instrument which he has yet to learn to play with the same virtuosity as his old Russian garmoshka. “It is very sad that Maddalena’s husband died – now one can only try and imagine the merry atmosphere in their home when this garmoshka was played there, and how sorrowful it all became when it went silent in 2003. But it is now back to life, and will play again – this time in a far-away Russian village.”

“Every time I touch this instrument I will recall Maddalena from England. Many heartfelt thanks for her gift.”

“I love the idea that one of Robert’s instruments will be played again with joy,” Maddalena wrote. “That brings me joy, and England and Russia nearer.”

The move is likely to trigger new economic sanctions from Western governments at a time when Belarus is struggling with a financial crisis. But Lukashenko Wednesday hinted that he may pardon convicted opposition figures in what analysts said would be an attempt to rebuild relations.

Nikolai Statkevich and Dmitry Uss, both of whom ran against Lukashenko in last year’s election, were sentenced to six and five-and-a-half years in prison respectively.

Lukashenko, in power since 1994, has cracked down on opposition since securing a fourth term in office in a vote that Western monitors criticized as fraudulent. Demonstrators took to the streets in their thousands in Minsk in the most serious protests in years.

Earlier this month, leading opposition figure Andrei Sannikov of the Charter 97 rights group, who also stood against Lukashenko, was sentenced to five years in a high-security prison on a similar charge.

Sannikov’s wife, journalist Irina Khalip, and two other presidential challengers, Vladimir Neklyayev and Vitaly Rymashevsky, have been given suspended sentences.

Another presidential candidate, Alex Mikhalevich, has been given political asylum in the Czech Republic, where he fled after accusing Belarus’s KGB security service of torturing him.

The crackdown has prompted the European Union and the United States to introduce sanctions that include travel bans on Lukashenko and 150 other officials.

It has also made Belarus’s chances of securing financial aid from the International Monetary Fund slim, at best.

Initially, Lukashenko said he was not bothered by the sanctions as Belarus, facing a large current account deficit and a run on its rouble currency, which has been devalued by over a third this week, asked Russia for $3 billion in bailout loans.

But Russia this month refused to provide the loan in a single instalment, offering only $1.2 billion this year and advising Minsk to seek IMF aid.

Wednesday, in a gesture seen by analysts as an attempt to mend ties with the West, Lukashenko said Belarus could free jailed opposition leaders.

“After Lukashenko’s statement yesterday, it seems that he plans to pardon all of them, which makes the length of their sentences irrelevant,” said Belarussian political analyst Alexander Feduta.

“What is important is that they have been found guilty and Lukashenko can display mercy.”

(Reporting by Vasily Fedosenko and Andrei Makhovsky; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

But in the southeast of Belarus, people stream to a tightly guarded area surrounded by solid fences and barbed wire, where whole villages were evicted 25 years ago after being contaminated with deadly radiation spewed by a blown up reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in neighboring Ukraine.

The glum evacuees stream into the dangerous exclusion zone, not only to tend to the graves of their kinsmen, but also to cast a glance at their former homes in forlorn villages often plundered by looters. Fellow villagers come from all parts of Belarus, as well as Russia and Ukraine, to use the four days given by the authorities during Radunitsa to clean graves, lay flowers, leave sweets and a glass of wine at the tomb, to give each other a hearty hug and share news.

In the village of Pogonnoye, around 500 of those 2,000 who were evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster have already died, according to official lists hung at a local cemetery. Many of the dead are brought by their relatives to this desolate village to be buried in their native land.

One of the former villagers, 76-year-old Natalya Belkovets, told me her mother could not survive resettlement from her birthplace and died in May 1986, just two weeks after leaving Pogonnoye. It was next to impossible to persuade the authorities to allow for her burial in her village, Natalya said. The funeral was tightly controlled by army servicemen, she said. Now, formalities have been simplified – the dead are just brought in and interred, no special permits are required.

Many of the local houses are now in ruins, despoiled by gangs of marauders. A quick glance at the ruins, a quick drink of vodka – and a visitor is rushed away from his former yard tainted with radiation.

Unable to rein in their emotions, some of the former villagers burst into tears – like Sergei Belkovets, who found a picture of himself when he was 50 years younger.

In Pogonnoye, I overheard an old man asking his younger relative to bury him “in this very cemetery, under this very pine, with a stunning view of sunrises in one direction and a village landscape in another”.

There is little doubt the old man’s request will be respected – for many years to come, deceased evacuees are set to return to rest in peace in their native land. And for more years to come, despondent survivors of the world’s worst nuclear disaster will stream to their birthplace from which they were once uprooted.