Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina (Russian: Борис Евдокимович Щербина; Ukrainian: Борис Євдокимович Щербина, romanized: Borys Yevdokymovych Shcherbyna; 5 October 1919 – 22 August 1990) was a Russian Soviet politician who served as a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union from 1984 to 1989.

Originally from Ukraine, Shcherbina was influential in the development of the oil and gas industry in Siberia, particularly in Tyumen Oblast.

[3] Further education was interrupted in 1939 when he volunteered to join the army and fight in the Winter War against Finland as part of the 316th ski squadron.

[8][14] As minister, he directed the construction of the Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhhorod pipeline connecting the Urengoi gas field in Western Siberia to Uzhgorod near the Czechoslovak border in Ukraine.

[10] For his role in hastening construction, Shcherbina was decorated with the title Hero of Socialist Labour and a few awards, including an Order of Lenin, on 6 October 1983.

4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat in northern Ukraine exploded in the early morning.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikolai Ryzhkov decided then to form a commission headed by Shcherbina.

[18] According to The Washington Post, Shcherbina had initially rejected appeals for an immediate evacuation of the area from civil defence workers, citing "panic is even worse than radiation."

Although Shcherbina and other officials read out prepared scripts, portions of the conference, such as the possibility of cancer development following radiation exposure, were omitted when shown on Soviet television.

[22] In a Politburo session on 3 July 1986 chaired by Gorbachev, Shcherbina presented the findings from the commission's investigation where he blamed both the staff of Chernobyl, but also the design of RBMK reactors.

[23] Excerpts of the session later published by the head of the Federal Archival Agency of Russia Rudolph Pikhoia disclosed Shcherbina's full presentation to the Politburo.

He began by laying the blame on the nuclear plant's leadership - the Ministry of Energy and Electrification and the government company SoyuzAtomEnergo - for creating a culture of carelessness and failing to learn from previous accidents.

He then described the events that led to the disaster, including design flaws present in RBMK reactors where Shcherbina also reported that the commission found that the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, Kurchatov Institute, and the RBMK reactor designers held some responsibility for the disaster.

He described RBMK reactors as being "incompatible with modern safety requirements.”[24] Two days later on 5 July, the USSR's official press agency TASS reported that the government had replaced Shcherbina with Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Gusev as head of the Chernobyl commission amid rumours of Shcherbina's declining health and hospitalisation from radiation exposure.

[20][25] Shcherbina was present at the Soviet signing of two treaties from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in response to the Chernobyl disaster - the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident and the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency.

In response to the humanitarian crisis, the Soviet government formed a special commission to handle refugees in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and to give material aid to the region.

[9] Due to him suffering from asthma after developing pneumonia while in Northern Russia, Shcherbina never smoked or drank alcohol.