Kyiv fears catastrophic impact on Europe’s biggest nuclear plant as Russia relocates thousands

Ukraine’s atomic energy operator has warned of a “catastrophic” lack of qualified staff to operate Europe’s biggest nuclear power station as Russia’s occupation force removes people from frontline areas ahead of an expected counterattack by Kyiv’s military.

The state-owned Energoatom company said Russia was planning to move about 3,100 people from the town of Enerhodar in southeastern Ukraine, including 2,700 employees of the nearby Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

“The Russian occupiers are proving their inability to ensure the operation of the [plant] as there is now a catastrophic lack of qualified personnel,” the firm said on Wednesday. “Even those Ukrainian workers who, by signing shameful contracts agreed to co-operate with the [Russians], are going to be ‘evacuated’ in the near future. And this will exacerbate the already extremely urgent issue of having sufficient personnel to ensure the safe operation of the [facility], even in its current ‘shutdown’ state.”

The plant’s six reactors are not producing power for the national grid but need constant safety management, and the facility has repeatedly been forced to switch to diesel back-up generators due to shelling that Ukraine and Russia blame on each other. The plant is run by Ukrainian technicians overseen by Russian soldiers who seized the site soon after launching an all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

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Calls from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to create a “security zone” around the plant have come to nothing, and Kyiv accuses Russia’s army of using the facility as a “nuclear shield” where it stores weapons and fires on Ukrainian-held territory across the Dnipro river; Moscow, meanwhile, insists it is protecting the site from Ukrainian attack.

Collaborationist officials in occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia region announced late last week that thousands of elderly, ill and disabled people would be moved, along with children and their parents, from 18 towns and villages near the front line.

Ukrainian officials say collaborators and people who took Russian passports during the occupation are also fleeing, and paint a picture of growing chaos and panic as basic services shut down. Accounts of events in occupied areas could not be verified.

IAEA director general Rafael Grossi warned on Saturday that the situation around the power station was “becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous”, but said officials at the site had assured his agency’s monitors that staff numbers were “sufficient for the safe operation of the plant”.

Russia accuses Ukraine of whipping up fears of a nuclear accident while planning to retake the plant as part of its looming counter-offensive.

“I have no doubt that under certain circumstances the Ukrainian armed forces will try to cross the Dnipro, create a springboard and seize the [facility] ... They are trying to justify their provocation by blaming everything on Russia,” said Vladimir Rogov, a Moscow-installed occupation official.

Kyiv’s military said it had inflicted heavy losses on enemy forces trying to seize the eastern city of Bakhmut, a day after the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, threatened for a second time to withdraw his fighters from the battle due to ammunition shortages, and accused Russian soldiers of abandoning their positions.

Ukrainian military spokesman Serhiy Cherevatyi said two companies of Russia’s 72nd Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade had been “seriously damaged” in clashes near Bakhmut.

In Poland, meanwhile, a state committee advised that the country should in future call Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad by the Polish version of its pre-Soviet name Królewiec. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Poland slips from time to time into a form of madness driven by its hatred of Russians … It brings nothing good to Poland or Polish people.”

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2023