If Russia moves staff out of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Ukraine says it could be catastrophic

Russia plans to relocate around 3,100Ukrainian staff from Europe's largest nuclear plant, Ukraine's atomic energy company claimed Wednesday, warning of a potential "catastrophic lack of qualified personnel" at the Zaporizhzhia facility in Russia-occupied southern Ukraine.

Workers who signed employment contracts with Russia's nuclear agency Rosatom following Moscow's capture of the Zaporizhzhia plant early in the war are set to be taken to Russia along with their families, Energoatom said in a Telegram post.

Energoatom didn't specify whether the employees would be forcibly moved out of the plant. It also wasn't immediately possible to verify Energoatom's claims about Moscow's plan.

Removing staff would "exacerbate the already extremely urgent issue" of staff shortages, Energoatom said.

An Energoatom representative reached by phone told The Associated Press that the evacuation plan, which staff were aware of, covered roughly half of the plant's 6,000 employees and was prompted by fears of a Ukraine counteroffensive in the area.

Some plant employees are already being relocated deeper into Russia-held territory and accommodated in the resort towns of Berdiansk and Kyrylivka on the Azov Sea coast, the person said on condition of anonymity because of safety fears. Before the war, the plant employed around 11,000 people.

About 500 Russian troops are stationed at the site, while at least 1,500 others are based in the nearby city of Enerhodar, the Energoatom representative said.

The Russians have laid minefields around the plant and built defensive positions, the person said.

Evacuation order

The Moscow-installed governor of the region ordered civilian evacuations from the area last Saturday, including from the nearby city of Enerhodar, where most plant workers live. The full scope of the evacuation order was not clear.

Fighting near the plant has fuelled fears of a potential catastrophic incident like the one at Chernobyl, in northern Ukraine, where a reactor exploded in 1986 and spewed deadly radiation, contaminating a vast area in the world's worst nuclear accident.

Zaporizhzhia is one of the 10 biggest nuclear plants in the world. While its six reactors have been shut down for months, it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

Kremlin-installed authorities in the Zaporizhzhia region are accelerating their push to relocate local residents, including families of workers at the plant, due to an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive, Kyiv officials said.

Moved to southern Russia

Military analysts say Ukraine may focus the counteroffensive on the Zaporizhzhia region, trying to split Russian forces in two by pushing through to the Azov Sea coast in the south.

Relatives of Zaporizhzhia plant staff who agreed to relocate were taken to Russia's southern Rostov region and placed in temporary camps, the Ukrainian General Staff said.

It said that plant employees are currently prohibited from leaving Enerhodar. It made no mention of the alleged Russian plan referred to by Energoatom.

Ukraine's National Resistance Center, which says it runs and co-ordinates Ukrainian partisan movements on territory occupied by Russian forces, says Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhzhia are shutting down schools, preparing buses and appointing officials to oversee the evacuation process.

They allege that the process is largely targeting children.

The International Criminal Court in March issued an arrest warrant for Russian leader Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him and Russia's children's ombudsperson of personal responsibility for the abductions of minors from Ukraine.

At the time, Ukraine's human rights chief, Dmytro Lubinets, said that 16,226 Ukrainian children had been forcibly taken to Russia, citing data from Ukraine's National Information Bureau.

'Seriously compromised'

After taking over at Zaporizhzhia, the Russians left the Ukrainian staff in place to keep the plant running, but the exact number of workers currently at the plant is not known. The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), did not immediately reply to an Associated Press query about the staffing level.

However, the IAEA said soon after Russian troops overran the plant after invading Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, that low staffing levels "seriously compromised" one of the fundamental factors in nuclear safety and security, which is that "operating staff must be able to fulfil their safety and security duties and have the capacity to make decisions free of undue pressure."

The IAEA has deployed a handful of staff at Zaporizhzhia in an effort to ensure its safety.