The Hrushiv apparitions occurred in the village of Hrushiv (Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine) beginning on 26 April 1987 — exactly the first anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. A 12-year-old girl, Marina Kizyn, first saw the Virgin Mary on the balcony of the Chapel of the Blessed Trinity. The apparition was subsequently witnessed by thousands of villagers and an estimated half a million pilgrims over the following months — an extraordinary event under Soviet rule, when religion was suppressed and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was still officially banned. Because the Church itself was illegal at the time, the apparitions were never subjected to a formal canonical investigation; they remain a popular but officially unrecognised devotion.