Russia beat, starved, and electrocuted people from a captured Ukrainian nuclear power plant in a web of underground prisons, escaped workers say

A serviceman with a Russian flag on his uniform stands guard near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict outside the Russian-controlled city of Enerhodar in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine August 4, 2022.

REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

• Russia has been torturing workers at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, former employees say.
• The plant in occupied southeastern Ukraine is Europe's largest nuclear power facility.
• "Some people's spirits were broken, they were beaten so badly," a worker told The Wall Street Journal.

Russian intelligence agents have detained and in some cases brutally tortured more than 200 workers at Europe's largest nuclear plant in occupied Ukraine, holding some for weeks in a web of underground prisons, escaped employees told The Wall Street Journal.

Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant soon after the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. It has been the site of periodic fighting that has alarmed observers, including the International Atomic Energy Agency. The plant shut down the last of its six reactors in September but requires a steady source of electricity to maintain safeguards.

The plant's former director, Ihor Murashov, ran the facility for seven months under Russian occupation. Speaking to the Journal, he recounted how he himself was detained in one of the Russian occupier's basement prisons before being released under international pressure in October.

According to Murashov, he was detained by Russia's FSB, the successor to the Soviet Union's KGB, in a facility near the nuclear plant known as "the Hole," one of several purported underground detention centers. He and other workers described being beaten, starved, and electrocuted by their interrogators; some were also shot, with at least one employee being tortured to death.

The attacks on essential staff came after some continued to passively resist Russian occupation, such as by displaying miniature Ukrainian flags at their desks.

"They think that by doing this they can change the minds of these people," Murashov said.

Energoatom, Ukraine's state-run nuclear power company, said at least 200 workers have been detained, the Journal reported.

One worker, Voldymr Zhayvoronok, said he was detained in an underground prison for 53 days. He said he was regularly beaten and showed reporters a missing fingernail that he said was ripped out by his interrogators.

In September, following a visit by a 14-member delegation, the IAEA issued a report saying that the plant's remaining 907 workers — down from more than 1,200 prior to the war — were being forced to operate "under extremely stressful conditions while under the control of Russian armed forces," a situation it described as "untenable."

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