A photo taken during a trip organized by the Russian military shows a Russian serviceman near the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in Enerhodar, Ukraine, in May. Credit … Sergey Ilnitsky / EPA, via Shutterstock
Russian troops, who control a giant nuclear power plant in Ukraine, are detaining workers and questioning them brutally in search of possible saboteurs, prompting many employees to leave and raising security concerns, Ukrainian officials say.
The Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant – the largest in Europe – is located in the southern Ukrainian city of Enerhodar on the eastern side of the Dnieper River, opposite a territory still held by Ukrainian forces. With 11,000 workers, the plant is strategically important, and plant safety concerns make any Ukrainian counter-offensive to retake the area particularly difficult.
Russian forces have fortified the plant outside with trenches and heavy artillery, and are stepping up measures inside to find anyone they believe could pose a threat, according to local and company officials.
“People are being abducted en masse,” Energodar Mayor in Exile Dmitry Orlov said during a meeting Wednesday with representatives of Energoatom, the state-owned company that monitors the complex. “The whereabouts of some of them are unknown. The others are in very difficult conditions: they have been 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 flee Ukrainian territory. “Even young people are leaving town,” he said. “It is not clear who will run the nuclear power plant.
Mr Orlov’s statements could not be confirmed independently. But Energoatom officials have offered similar stories based on interviews with factory workers, and witnesses in other occupied parts of Ukraine have reported similar reports of mass arrests of civilians.
At the same meeting, acting Energoatom President Petro Kotin said that “the seizure and gradual transformation of the plant into a military base with many weapons and explosives” was an act of “nuclear terrorism”. He said the company would continue to support its employees in the occupied territories in every way possible.
Last month, Mr Kotin expressed concern about Russia’s militarization of the facility.
“The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is a well-fortified facility even in peacetime,” he said. “This is a perfect military base. In addition, the Russians understand that the amount of nuclear material there protects them. Ukraine will not strike at such an object.
Enerhodar, like other Russian-occupied areas in the south, has been the scene of attacks by growing resistance in southern Ukraine – with civilians known as guerrillas involved in violence against the occupying forces, civil disobedience and efforts to support the Ukrainian military – and repression by Russian forces.
Tensions in the city escalated on May 22 when Andriy Shevchik, whom the Russians appointed mayor, was injured in a bomb blast 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 shot several times in his home by Russian forces.
This week, Vladimir Rogov, a Russian plenipotentiary on the Zaporozhye region’s main board, which includes the nuclear power plant, said in a television interview that it was time to introduce the death penalty for “war criminals.”
Ivan Federov, the mayor of Melitopol in exile who has become something of an unofficial spokesman for Ukrainian resistance in the region, said on Tuesday that Russian forces had detained about 500 locals in his hometown alone.
His claim cannot be verified independently, as Russia strictly controls access to the occupied territories. People living there regularly check their mobile phones with Russian forces at checkpoints and during searches of their homes, according to witnesses, making communication with outsiders extremely risky.
Mr Federov himself was abducted by Russian forces before being released, part of a model unfolding in towns and villages, including Enerhodar. Ivan Samoidyuk, Enerhodar’s first deputy mayor, has been in Russian custody for more than three months, according to Ukrainian authorities.
As Russia intensified its repression, the Ukrainian government promised a major counter-offensive and told anyone who could flee the occupied territories to leave before it could begin.
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