In Energodar, a satellite city of the temporarily occupied ZNPP, the Russian military has significantly stepped up the search for those Ukrainian nuclear workers who have not signed labor contracts with JSC Zaporozhye NPP Operating Organization or another Rosatom enterprise for more than a year — the Kremlin continues to control the plant, having issued it on specially created legal entity. This was reported in the Telegram channel of the Ukrainian Energoatom.
According to the department, the military tortured employees, beat several, knocking out consent to cooperate with the aggressor.
“Even despite threats, torture, blackmail and continuous intimidation, the Ukrainians at the Zaporizhzhya NPP hold themselves with dignity and refuse to cooperate,” Energoatom said in a statement.
ZNPP was occupied by the Russian military at the very beginning of the war. Since then, employees of Rosatom have also been there. The work of the station all this time is provided by Ukrainian personnel.
The Insider wrote about torture at the ZNPP back in September 2022. The Russian security forces already then kidnapped, tortured and killed employees of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and residents of Energodar. One source told The Insider that station employees were banned from carrying camera phones to work and were regularly searched and interrogated. The staff was forced to take Russian citizenship, taken to an unknown destination, kept in basements for 2-3 weeks, intimidated, some were taken to the city hall building “for a conversation”. Conditions of detention – cells measuring 3 by 4 meters, in one room there are 12-16 people. At that time, at least two such “torture” locations were known: a fire station and a police building.
On September 30, the Russian military took away Igor Murashov, General Director of the station, in an unknown direction. His car was stopped on the road from ZNPP to Energodar, after which they were taken by force blindfolded. On October 3, he was released and returned home. As the BBC Russian Service wrote in October 2022, Ukrainian employees of the Zaporizhzhya NPP were also threatened with being sent to fight on the side of Russia if they refused to sign documents on transferring to work for Rosatom.
In the summer of 2022, Andrei Goncharuk, a ZNPP hydroshop diver, died, who, as Energoatom reported, was tortured by the Russian military, “forcing him to come up with a justification for the need to drain the cooling pools.”
According to Energoatom, as of December 2022, more than 200 people were abducted: some of them were expelled to Ukrainian territory, others are demanded a ransom, the fate of many of them remains unknown.