Russian forces interrogate workers at nuclear plant in Ukraine

Russian soldiers, who control a giant nuclear power plant in Ukraine, detain workers and subject them to brutal interrogations in search of possible saboteurs.

It is stated by the Ukrainian officials, the New York Times reports.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant with 11,000 workers is the largest NPP in Europe. It is situated in southern Ukraine in the city of Enerhodar on the eastern side of the Dnipro River, across from territory still controlled by Ukrainian forces. The plant occupies a strategically important place. But because of safety reasons, any counteroffensive by Ukrainian troops to retake the area is extremely difficult.

According to local authorities and company officials, the Russian troops have fortified the outside of the plant with trenches and heavy artillery, while inside they are stepping up efforts to find those they think might pose a threat.

The exiled mayor of Energodar Dmytro Orlov claims that the Russian occupying forces began more and more actively to apply repressions concerning the Ukrainian workers of the captured Zaporizhzhia NPP. “People are being abducted en masse. The whereabouts of some of them are unknown. The rest are in very difficult conditions: They are being tortured and physically and morally abused”.

Commenting on the situation to Radio Svoboda, Orlov told that many plant employees and other residents are trying to escape to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

“Now people are being taken straight from the NPP, they say that someone handed you over there, and they are thrown into the basements. There is more than a dozen of such employees. People stay in the city so that there are no nuclear problems, so that the NPP can be operated safely, [and they have to do it] under moral and physical pressure. There are few guerrillas left, even young people are leaving the city. It is not clear who will operate the nuclear power plant”, the mayor said.

According to New York Times, officials from the company Energoatom, operating the NPP, have offered similar accounts based on interviews with workers at the plant, and witnesses in other occupied parts of Ukraine have relayed similar reports of mass detentions of civilians. 

Petro Kotin, the acting president of Energoatom, said that the plant’s “seizure and gradual transformation into a military base with many weapons and explosives” amounted to an act of “nuclear terrorism.”

Author - Andrew Klark, 23/06/2022