Russian troops have turned the nuclear power plant near Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, Europe’s largest, on a military base near the front line and holding some workers hostage – and many international observers are concerned about the lack of security guarantees. About five hundred soldiers have placed heavy artillery batteries, mobile rocket launchers and armored vehicles inside the plant and have also mined the bank of the river from which the six reactors draw water for cooling.
In fact, the plant has become the Russian garrison that supports the entire southern front of the war, only five kilometers from the positions of the Ukrainian soldiers who cannot shoot in order not to risk an atomic accident – just the memory of that of Chernobyl, which took place in 1986. in the north of the country. While all around the Russian bases come under fire from the artillery batteries and Himars rocket launchers sent to the Ukrainians by Western governments, the nuclear power plant is untouched.
An unprecedented case
The militarization of a plant, even more so large, is a fact that had never happened in the history of the nuclear sector – governed by a dense web of international regulations and controls. Last week the sensors and cameras that continuously transmit the most important detections to the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna went out for three days and sent nothing – and this is the second time since. when the Russians captured the plant eight days after the invasion began. Those measurements serve to confirm that everything in the plant is proceeding as it should and when they stop it is a bad sign. “They don’t realize what could happen because of what they are doing,” the wife of one of the plant workers told The Wall Street Journal, who spoke to local sources.
Zaporizhzhia, the Russians bring weapons and soldiers into the nuclear power plant: the Ukrainians will not be able to bomb it
by our correspondent Daniele Raineri
In February and March, Russian soldiers had chosen to pass, to go from the Belarusian border to the capital Kiev, also through the contaminated area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and had violated every elementary safety measure – some had moved radioactive metal waste to bare hands and even taken her away. They hadn’t given the idea that they fully realized what they were doing in the middle of a danger zone.
Security pillars violated
The International Atomic Energy Agency has declared that the conditions inside the plant violate the so-called seven pillars of safety, starting with the regular arrival of spare parts to the integrity of the structures and the tranquility of the technicians. What happens, for example, if one of the mines explodes and damages the filters in the cooling water intake ducts? In May, the director of the agency, Raphael Grossi, said that a major concern was the possibility of a quantity of nuclear material being stolen. “It is the thought that keeps us awake at night”.
After the withdrawal from Snake Island, it is impossible for the Russians to land in Odessa: Kiev frees forces for the Donbass
by Gianluca Di Feo
Relations between the Russian soldiers and the eleven thousand Ukrainian workers at the Zaporizhzhia plant are very tense. A member of the Ukrainian Resistance Center who prefers not to be mentioned by name (it is a group that coordinates the civilian resistance of Ukrainians in the occupied areas) tells a Republic that even those workers at the plant were trained in the months preceding the invasion to deny any form of collaboration with the invaders. As the Ukrainian Pravda wrote yesterday, the Russians, exasperated by the lack of cooperation from local technicians, are bringing in specialists from Russia, who are settling in some lodgings inside a bunker under the plant. The Russians’ plan is to disconnect the reactors from Ukraine’s electricity grid starting in September and divert production, so as to supply electricity only to the territories occupied by Russian soldiers and no longer to the rest of the country.
Technicians taken hostage
Meanwhile it is chaos inside the nuclear plant. The Russians take the technicians hostage as if it were a routine thing and free them only in exchange for the payment of a ransom – small sums of around a thousand dollars – and information on the negotiations runs on some chats created by the families of the abductees and among the workers to share news and raise money. Colleagues of the kidnapped are forced to extend shifts to cover the holes. At the moment there are forty people in the hands of Russian soldiers in the nuclear power plant waiting to be released (it does not happen only inside the plant: news of kidnappings in exchange for ransoms comes from all occupied territories).
Donbass, Lugansk are lost but Ukraine is preparing the counter-offensive
by Gianluca Di Feo
Yesterday, soldiers threatened to empty the cooling tanks because they suspected that there were weapons hidden at the bottom, without considering the risks to the plant, which needs a constant flow of filtered water so as not to overheat the reactors. The Russians accuse the technicians of being spies and there have been cases of arrests, torture and beatings. In May, they killed a maintenance technician, 53-year-old Sergey Shvets, after accusing him of secretly passing information to the Ukrainian military.