10/11/2022
Ukraine’s state nuclear operator accused Russian forces on Tuesday of abducting another senior official at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The sprawling plant sits just inside Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine, and the ongoing military occupation of it and fighting around it have fueled fears for months of a possible nuclear accident or incident.
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Energoatom wrote on its channel on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday that Valeriy Martyniuk, the plant’s deputy director general for human resources, had been kidnapped. It wrote that “they keep holding him at an unknown location and (are) probably using methods of torture and intimidation.”
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The plant has been held by Russian forces for months but its Ukrainian staff have continued to operate the facility. Reports of intimidation of the staff and abductions began trickling out over the summer.
The exiled mayor of the city of Melitopol, which sits in the Russian-occupied portion of the Zaporizhzhia region, told CBS News earlier this month that he expected Putin to lash out with a tactical nuclear strike in retaliation for the loss of territory in the occupied regions. Ukraine, along with the U.S. and other partners, has warned for weeks that Putin could order some kind of attack on or incident at the nuclear plant to use as a pretext for his own nuclear attack.
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