The Zaporizhzhia plant, which is Europe’s largest, was seized by Russian soldiers in March and has since become a flashpoint in the Ukrainian conflict. Experts fear that continued shelling of the region could trigger a nuclear disaster. “A regime of harassment of personnel was gradually established” after the Russian takeover, Petro Kotin, director of Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency, said in an interview with a French news agency on Friday. “Two people were beaten to death,” he added. “We don’t know where about 10 people are now. They took them [by the Russians] and after that, we have no information about their whereabouts.” Kotin said another 200 had been taken into custody. The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency sent a 14-member inspection team to the plant last week. They described difficult working conditions at the facility and called for “the immediate establishment of a nuclear safety and security buffer zone” amid what it said was an “unbearable” situation. Kotin told AFP that power lines had been cut at the factory as a result of the shelling. The only operating reactor is “running at a very low power level,” he said.
