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2 | WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITIONpage t wo
A Russian state weather agency has
named for the first time four specific ra-
dioactive particles released by an explo-
sion at a military testing site this month
that left at least seven people dead and
has remained shrouded in secrecy
weeks after the incident.
The Russian meteorological agency
identified the particles as isotopes of
strontium, lanthanum and two types of
barium, but asserted that radiation lev-
els were now normal in cities near the
accident, which occurred on Aug. 8 in
the country’s north.
All four particles form from radioac-
tive gases released during nuclear fis-
sion, experts said, and might be ex-
pected to drift far from the release site.
While shedding little light on the de-
vice that exploded — or the potential
risk to people living nearby — the an-
nouncement on Monday did offer hints
that other, heavier elements could have
been released closer to the blast site.
The statement, from an agency whose
main task is forecasting weather, came
as the latest data point in the gradual
drip of information released by the Rus-
sian authorities, who have been slow to
acknowledge that a nuclear accident
had occurred during a military test.
Western experts and President
Trump have suggested the explosion oc-
curred while the Russian military was
testing a novel cruise missile design that
uses nuclear propulsion, which NATO
refers to as the Skyfall missile.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia
acknowledged last week that the explo-
sion occurred during a test of a military
device.
Both Russia and the United Stateshave begun testing of new delivery sys-
tems for nuclear weapons as the disar-
mament treaties of the Cold War era
break down or expire.
Russian officials have not conceded
that the explosion involved the missile
called the Skyfall. But on Monday, a Rus-
sian diplomat for the first time spoke of
the accident in terms of the purpose for
such a missile.
The diplomat, Aleksei Karpov, Rus-
sia’s envoy to international organiza-
tions in Vienna, blamed the United
States for setting Russia on the path to
developing a new device by withdraw-
ing from an antiballistic missile treaty in
2002.
Mr. Karpov told a gathering of states
that are party to the Comprehensive Nu-
clear Test Ban Treaty that the explosion
did not involve a nuclear warhead, and
thus did not fall within the treaty’s
purview.
Instead, he said, the explosion was
“linked to the development of weapons
which we had to begin creating as one of
the tit-for-tat measures in the wake ofthe United States’ withdrawal from the
Antiballistic Missile Treaty.”
The Russian military initially re-
ported that the Aug. 8 explosion near the
village of Nenoksa, on the White Sea in
northern Russia, released no contami-
nants — even as the local authorities at a
city about 20 miles away reported a
spike in radiation levels.
More misinformation and misdirec-
tion soon followed. In Moscow, some
television channels blinked out on the
night of the accident; screens turned
blue and broadcast a warning for resi-
dents to remain indoors because of a
storm with strong winds. Automated
sensors that form part of an interna-
tional network of radiation monitors,
and which may have provided more
clues about what happened, mysteri-
ously stopped transmitting results.
Doctors and nurses at a hospital in the
city of Arkhangelsk, about 40 miles from
the blast, said they were not warned that
patients arriving from the site were con-
taminated with radiation, and treated
them without protective clothing.Later, when one of the doctors was
found to have a trace of radioactive cesi-
um 137 in his tissue, the regional govern-
ment in Arkhangelsk issued a news re-
lease saying the contamination was
“with some degree of certainty” unrelat-
ed to the accident.
The doctor likely ate the element un-
wittingly in “fish, mushrooms, lichens,
seaweed” or another food fouled earlier
by fallout from some other, unspecified
incident, the statement said.
Officials told the contaminated man
he probably ate “Fukushima crabs”
while on vacation in Thailand, according
to Meduza, an independent news site,
citing a fellow doctor at the hospital.
The identification of the four isotopes
by the Russian meteorological agency
came 18 days after the explosion.
The agency noted that samples taken
in the city of Severodvinsk in the 15 days
after the explosion contained strontium
91, barium 139, barium 140 and lan-
thanum 140. Earlier, the same weather
agency said a cloud of “inert radioactive
gas” had set off radiation meters in the
city.
The four isotopes are solids formed
from the decay of two radioactive inert
gases created from fission of uranium or
plutonium, Bruno Chareyron, the lab-
oratory director of CRIIRAD, a French
nongovernmental group tracking radia-
tion risks, said in a telephone interview.
The presence of these isotopes miles
from the site of the accident, he said,
suggested heavier, more dangerous
contaminants such as plutonium, cesi-
um 137 or radioactive iodine likely fell
into the sea.
Greenpeace, the conservation group,
issued a statement saying the presence
of these isotopes suggested cesium 137
was also released.
“As you have fission products like ra-
dioactive gasses, it is logical to think you
may have other fission products, too,”
Mr. Chareyron said.
Without more information, he said, it
is impossible to determine the risks to
the environment or people living
nearby.Arkhangelsk, Russia, 40 miles from a nuclear accident this month. Doctors at a hospital there said they had not been warned that patients were contaminated with radiation.PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAXIM BABENKO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESMOSCOWRussian weather agency
says 4 types of isotopes
were released in accidentBY ANDREW E. KRAMERKegostrov Island, Russia, near where the nuclear accident took place on the White Sea.
Radioactive particles might be expected to drift far from the release site.A slow leak of radiation data
was dreaded. Sushila Bala Dasi, 62, said
she sobbed so loudly on the train ride to
the city that passengers called the po-
lice.
Conditions for the widows became so
dire that India’s Supreme Court took no-
tice of their plight in 2012, ruling that the
government must provide them food,
medical care and a sanitary place to live.
Since then, a number of government
projects have been introduced, includ-
ing building Krishna Kutir, or Krishna’s
House, which cost $8 million and opened
last August. Many of the 129 widows liv-
ing there arrived alone, by train, from
villages hundreds of miles away, with
dirty, torn clothing. Some came with se-
rious injuries.
At the ashram’s inauguration,
Maneka Gandhi, India’s minister for
women at the time, said that there was
still far to go in improving widows’ treat-
ment but that she hoped Krishna Kutir’s
model could be replicated elsewhere in
India.
Vinita Verma, a social worker from
Sulabh International, an organization
that works with widows, said she had
seen a slow erosion of the conditioning
that taught the women — who number
at least 3,000 in Vrindavan — to view
themselves as unworthy of love.
Widows who once refused to wear col-
or are opting for garments dyed blue,
burnt orange and pink.
“They used to think only in white,
nothing else,” Ms. Verma said. “When
they were praying, they were crying.
When they were cooking, they were cry-
ing. Now, they have a value.”
But some widows still think of their
former homes.
Kali Dasi, a frail woman around 75,
said that last year she tried to reconcile
with her family in the state of West Ben-
gal, leaving Vrindavan to journey to her
village. When she got there, relatives
drained her life savings, about $230.
Someone bought her a train ticket back
to Vrindavan after seeing her begging
on the street.
“I want to go again,” Ms. Dasi said.
“My mind tells me one thing, but my
heart doesn’t agree. I am a mother.”
Though new arrivals are now brought
to Krishna Kutir, occupancy is still low
because widows say the ashram is too
far from the heart of Vrindavan, where
many go to pray. From the outside, the
building looks a bit like an isolated pris-
on, with high walls and barbed wire
strung along the roof to keep monkeys
from breaking solar panels. The swim-
ming pool has no water yet.
At government-run ashrams, women
are given just a few hundred rupees
each month, or less than $10 — and pay-
ments are sometimes delayed by weeks.
The women staying at Krishna Kutir
come mostly from poor, rural villages in
eastern India.From Monday to Friday, they make
decorative boxes for extra cash. Some
attend literacy classes where they learn
to write their names.
In group therapy sessions, they
gather in circles to discuss searing fam-
ily betrayals.
Niyati Das, 65, who was married at 14,
said an abusive son fed her only two
pieces of bread a day. Seven months ago,
she arrived at Krishna Kutir with a frac-
tured hand and foot. “Please keep me
here,” she kept repeating. “Even if you
beat me, I will stay.”
From her dormitory, Ms. Mahesh-
wari, who had arrived with a black eye
and head wounds, narrated her story.After her husband died a few years
ago, Ms. Maheshwari lived with her
son’s family in a city a few hundred
miles from Vrindavan. She was kept
locked in a room, fed irregular meals
and told she was “bad for society.”
A granddaughter slammed her into
walls. When she spoke on the phone
with her siblings, Ms. Maheshwari’s
daughter-in-law kept a stick raised
above her head as a threat.
Her brother eventually helped her es-
cape, but he wouldn’t house her.
When she arrived at Krishna Kutir,
Ms. Maheshwari cried and begged staff
members not to let her son take her
away.
In recent weeks, her world has
started to brighten. Last month, staff
members organized a celebration for a
religious festival, and Ms. Maheshwari
put flowers in her hair.
The women danced in their rooms and
in corridors, and near the empty swim-
ming pool. They sang so loudly their
voices reached the health clinic, where a
widow resting after surgery rose and
danced, too.
On that day — Ms. Maheshwari’s fa-
vorite memory, she said — she looked
around her new home, its halls filled
with the laughter of women like her, and
felt “absolutely free.”Abused and cast off,
widows find a home
I NDIA, FROM PAGE 1Nirmala Maheshwari, seated at center, in a craft workshop at the Krishna Kutir ashram.
After her husband died, she said, her son and other relatives starved and beat her.REBECCA CONWAY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESSreyansi Singh contributed reporting.THE NEW YORK TIMESIsabel Toledo, the Cuban-American de-
signer who was revered by other de-
signers for her ability to combine pre-
cise geometric construction with ex-
treme grace — but who was known to
most of the public as the creator of the
dress Michelle Obama wore in the 2009
inaugural parade — died on Monday at a
hospital in New York. She was 59.
The cause was breast cancer, her hus-
band, the artist Ruben Toledo, said.
“I knew that what I wore to my hus-
band’s first inauguration would go down
in history,” Mrs. Obama wrote in an
email, “so I wanted something that
would not only live up to the moment,
but would also stand up to the freezing
cold of that January day. With her in-
credible creativity and masterful talent,
Isabel designed a beautiful lemongrass
outfit that I just loved. She more than
met the moment — for that day and for
all of history.”
Uninterested in the limelight or in lo-
gos, Ms. Toledo was a rarity in the mod-
ern fashion world. Devoted to fashion as
a craft and an expression of self, she was
a throwback to a time before the de-
signer became the creative director.
Embedded in the Downtown New Yorkart scene, she toiled away in a pictur-
esque loft in Midtown Manhattan with
Mr. Toledo, her partner since high
school, dipping into the worlds of art,
dance and theater for the sheer joy of
aesthetic collaboration. They hung out
with Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel
Basquiat and the like.
Called a genius by Valerie Steele, the
curator of the museum at the Fashion
Institute of Technology in New York,
and a cult hero by Kim Hastreiter, a
founder of Paper magazine, Ms. Toledo
has been compared to the designers
Charles James and Geoffrey Beene be-
cause of her obsession with construc-
tion. She described her own work as “ro-
mantic mathematics.”
“I’m not supposed to say I’m not a
fashion person, but I’m not. I just, I love
design,” she told CNN in 2012. “Design is
so different than fashion. That’s why de-
sign lasts forever. It’s like an engineer. I
love to engineer a garment.”
Ms. Toledo was the recipient of a Na-
tional Design Award from the Cooper
Hewitt museum in 2005, was nominated
for a Tony for the costumes for the musi-
cal “After Midnight” in 2014 and twice
appeared on the International Best-
Dressed List.
In 2009, the museum at the Fashion
Institute of Technology staged a solo ret-
rospective of her work. But she was
never snobby about her vocation, de-
lighting in the idea that her work mightfind a wider audience through her posi-
tion as creative director of Anne Klein
from 2006 to 2007 and her collections for
Lane Bryant, created at a time when the
fashion world still largely ignored the
plus-size consumer.“Fashion is every woman’s language,
every woman’s tool,” she told Interview
magazine in 2014 when her Lane Bryant
collections made their debut. “My ideal
happens to be diversity. I love differ-
ence. I love change. I love experi-
mentation and eccentricities.”
María Isabel Izquierdo was born on
April 9, 1960, in Camajuani, Cuba, to
Félix and Bertha (Pérez) Izquierdo. She
began sewing at age 8 because, she told
CNN, “I couldn’t find anything I loved.”
She emigrated with her parents and
two sisters to the United States, and in
1968 the family settled in West New
York, N.J., where she met Mr. Toledo,
whose family was also from Cuba. She
was 14 and he was 13.She attended the Fashion Institute of
Technology and later transferred to Par-
sons School of Design. She left in 1979
before graduation to intern for Diana
Vreeland at the Costume Institute of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
She and Mr. Toledo married in 1984
and were almost never apart, seeming
to have the kind of transcendent love
story reserved for Hollywood movies
and sharing a look that made them seem
as if they had just emerged from a
vaudeville show drawn by Edward
Gorey. Mr. Toledo survives her, along
with her sisters, Mary Santos and Anna
Bertha Izquierdo.
Also in 1984, Ms. Toledo introduced
her own line. Its first appearance was at
a happening at the Danceteria nightclub
in New York, thanks to the artist Joey
Arias, a good friend who ran the events.
Though she became an official part of
New York Fashion Week in 1985 and her
pieces were soon picked up by Barneys
New York, Colette in Paris, Joyce in
Hong Kong and Ikram in Chicago,
among others, Ms. Toledo never lost her
affinity for the raw edge.
She also remained at the head of an
independent company, based a few
floors below the couple’s home, which
was a constantly mutating space
crammed with plants, objects and ideas
in progress, where the line between
work and invention entirely disap-
peared.“Isabel was a pure, uncorrupted fash-
ion designer,” said Ikram Goldman, the
founder of Ikram, who introduced Mrs.
Obama to Ms. Toledo’s work. “She de-
signed spectacular, innovative pieces
that flattered every curve of a woman’s
body, and she never conformed to or ac-
cepted the ‘fashion system.’”
Though that choice may have hurt
Ms. Toledo’s business in later years, as
fashion globalized and commodified, it
also allowed her to follow her own muse.
In doing so, she influenced a generation
of designers.
“As Picasso said, good designers don’t
copy — they steal,” said the designer Al-
ber Elbaz, the former creative director
of Lanvin. “Everybody sort of stole from
Isabel. Her work was about volume, cut,
experiments, a laboratory of fabric —
and that was not an Instagram moment.
It was fashion.”
By 2009, when Mrs. Obama chose a
Toledo dress and matching coat to wear
for her husband’s historic inauguration
— a dress that was widely heralded as a
triumph, and that helped frame the first
lady’s signature use of her position to
promote smaller American designers
and celebrate the melting pot of Amer-
ica — it seemed the world had finally
recognized Ms. Toledo’s gift.
In 2012 she published her autobiogra-
phy, “Roots of Style: Weaving Together
Life, Love, and Fashion.” The illustra-
tions were by Mr. Toledo, of course.Designer of Michelle Obama’s first inaugural outfit
ISABEL TOLEDO
1960-BY VANESSA FRIEDMANALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESSAt Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration,
Michelle Obama wore a two-piece ensem-
ble designed by Isabel Toledo, above.KATHY WILLENS/ASSOCIATED PRESSRELEASED
Uninterested in the limelight or in lo-RELEASED
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gos, Ms. Toledo was a rarity in the mod-RELEASED
gos, Ms. Toledo was a rarity in the mod-
ern fashion world. Devoted to fashion asRELEASED
ern fashion world. Devoted to fashion as
a craft and an expression of self, she wasRELEASED
a craft and an expression of self, she was
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a throwback to a time before the de-RELEASED signer became the creative director.signer became the creative director.
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