Former ZNPP director tells The New York Times how Russians interrogated and tortured plant employees

In an interview with The New York Times, former Zaporizhzhia NPP director Ihor Murashov spoke about the torture of employees during the Russian occupation.

Source:  The New York Times

The Russian military forced Murashov to sign a contract with the Russian state-owned company Rosatom, and then kidnapped him, held him hostage, and forced him to testify that the nuclear power plant was shelled by Ukrainian troops.

Ihor Murashov told The New York Times that the Russian military set up special zones outside the city where NPP employees were interrogated, abused, and beaten. They were called "pits": one was in a police station and the other in a military unit.

"I saw one of the employees who was in the pit, and he came out all yellow because of the bruises he had received," he said.

According to him, workers were taken from their homes and sometimes stopped at checkpoints as they entered the plant and then taken somewhere else.

The military also regularly checked whether the station's employees were monitoring pro-Ukrainian content. At first, they were looking for those who stood on the barricades at the entrance to the city of Enerhodar in the first days of the Russian invasion to prevent the Russian army from entering the city, and then for workers who were forced to sign contracts with Rosatom.

Murashov himself was also forced by the Russian military to sign a contract with the Russian state-owned company. After he refused, he was detained on his way to his home in late September. He was kidnapped, held hostage, and eventually forced to say on video that the station had been shelled by the Ukrainian army.

Background. As a reminder, today IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi arrived at Zaporizhzhia NPP, his second visit to the temporarily occupied nuclear power plant since the beginning of the invasion.