William Keo / Magnum
At the facility, occupied by Russia for the past two years, employees describe a regime of torture and abuse—and a growing threat of disaster.
This article is based on interviews and research by the Reckoning Project, a multinational group of journalists and lawyers collecting evidence of war crimes in Ukraine.
The zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in the city of Enerhodar, in eastern Ukraine, is Europe’s largest nuclear facility. For decades, it has supplied electricity to millions of households, not just in Ukraine, but in Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Moldova, Slovakia, and Romania as well. Until two years ago, more than 50,000 people lived in Enerhodar. Eleven thousand worked at the plant, and nearly everyone in Enerhodar had some sort of connection to it.
When Russia began its invasion, in 2022, it moved aggressively into the Zaporizhzhia region, raising fears about the safety of the plant. On February 27, 2022, just three days into the offensive, a Russian convoy advanced toward Enerhodar. For the next three days, as employees of the Zaporizhzhia plant, known as the ZNPP, worked to keep it running, residents took to the streets in an attempt to stop Russian military vehicles and troops from entering. The mayor tried to negotiate directly with the Russians.