Russian soldiers operating a massive nuclear power plant in Ukraine are detaining workers and subjecting them to brutal interrogations in a search for possible saboteurs, leaving many workers and raising security concerns, Ukrainian officials say.
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant – the largest in Europe – is located in southern Ukraine in the city of Enerhodar on the eastern side of the Dnipro River, opposite territory still held by Ukrainian troops. With 11,000 employees, the plant occupies a strategically important position, and security issues at the plant make any Ukrainian counter-offensive to retake the area particularly complicated.
Russian troops have reinforced the outside of the factory with trenches and heavy artillery, and inside they are stepping up measures to find anyone they believe could pose a threat, according to local and company officials.
“People are being kidnapped en masse,” exiled Enerhodar mayor Dmytro Orlov said Wednesday during a meeting with officials from Energoatom, the state-owned company that oversees the complex. “The whereabouts of some of them are unknown. The rest are in very difficult circumstances: they are tortured and physically and morally abused.”
Mr Orlov said in an interview with a local radio station this week that many factory workers and other residents were trying to escape to Ukraine-occupied territory. “Even young people are leaving the city,” he said. “It is unclear who will operate the nuclear power plant.”
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Mr Orlov’s statements could not be independently confirmed. But Energoatom officials have offered similar stories based on interviews with factory workers, and witnesses in other occupied parts of Ukraine have relayed similar reports of mass detentions of civilians.
At the same meeting, Petro Kotin, the acting president of Energoatom, said the “seizure and gradual transformation of the factory into a military base with many weapons and explosives” amounted to an act of “nuclear terrorism”. He said the company would continue to support its employees in occupied territories in every way possible.
Last month, Mr Kotin expressed his concern about Russia’s militarization of the facility.
“The Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is a well-fortified facility, even in peacetime,” he said. “It is a perfect military base. In addition, the Russians understand that the amount of nuclear material that is there protects them. Ukraine will not attack such an object.”
Enerhodar, like other Russian-occupied areas in the south, has been the scene of attacks by a growing resistance movement in southern Ukraine – with civilians known as partisans engaged in violence against the occupying forces, civil disobedience and attempts to aid the Ukrainian army – and reprisals by Russian troops.
Tensions in the city escalated on May 22, when Andrii Shevchyk, whom the Russians had appointed as mayor, was injured in a bomb attack outside his apartment. He was flown to Crimea for medical treatment. The next day, according to Energoatom, an employee of the nuclear power plant was fired upon several times in his home by Russian troops.
This week, Vladimir Rogov, a Russian nominee on the main governing council for the Zaporizka region, which includes the nuclear power plant, said in a televised interview that it was time to introduce the death penalty for “war criminals.”
Ivan Federov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol who has become a sort of unofficial spokesman for the Ukrainian resistance in the region, estimated on Tuesday that Russian troops had detained about 500 residents in his home city alone.
His claim could not be independently verified because Russia strictly controls access to occupied territories. People living there, according to witnesses, have their mobile phones inspected regularly by Russian troops at checkpoints and during house searches, making communication with outsiders extremely risky.
Mr Federov was himself kidnapped by Russian forces before being released, as part of a pattern that has played out in towns and villages, including Enerhodar. Ivan Samoidyuk, the first deputy mayor of Enerhodar, has been in Russian custody for more than three months, according to Ukrainian officials.
As Russia ramps up its repression, the Ukrainian government has promised a major counter-offensive, telling anyone who can flee the occupied territories to leave before it begins.
