Volodymyr, 63, grabs his phone and, hunched over the table, shows one of the last messages from someone who still lives in the city of Energodar, in southeastern Ukraine, occupied by Russian forces since the beginning of March 2022. It says: “There are fires, everything seems to be on fire. I feel apathy (…). Water and electricity problems are common.” The fragment not included is a code phrase frequently used to, without raising suspicion, warn that Russian soldiers are nearby and it is dangerous. Volodymyr, who prefers to keep his last name confidential for security reasons, was a worker at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, located on the western side of Energodar, on the banks of the Dnieper River. Like many other residents who fled, he maintains communication with the town through, generally, encrypted applications. The testimonies they collect speak of a climate of terror, a fearful, distrustful city; monitored on the street and inside the house by the military and intelligence services. A police state that arrests and tortures; that has brought new citizens to to russify the neighborhoods, and where it is difficult to get out.
The former employee of the plant left Energodar two months after the Russian troops arrived. Like many local residents, he had waved Ukrainian flags in protest. “And that was dangerous,” Volodymyr adds. “They took colleagues from work and beat them.” The repression had begun. Some colleagues still work there and talk to him. “It is hard on their mental health,” he admits. They use “special words” to communicate. They have to be very careful. “They have even seen men with headphones in vehicles on the streets monitoring conversations.” He wants to go home. His story here is passionate – “Energodar is Ukraine and Russia has to leave,” he says – but he does not know what he will find: “They are bringing Russian people into the city.” The latest images he has received from inside show, in fact, huge fires caused, according to him, by shells fired from nearby.
The Zaporizhia power plant was a priority in the offensive launched by Moscow in February 2022. The Ukrainian army held out for just over a week. Dmitro Orlov, 39, is the mayor of Energodar, now working from offices in Zaporizhia, some 130 kilometres to the northeast, which serve as a coordination centre for helping displaced people. “I had two options,” he says, “either cooperate or leave.” The Russian forces wanted to force him to cooperate, but he refused. “It was not a difficult decision,” the city mayor continues, “because they could have killed me.”
Orlov speaks calmly, didactic. He touches the ring on his ring finger as he describes what life is like in his city today. “Surviving there is very hard,” he says, “the Russians track those who use social networks or apps.” The greatest threat, says the mayor, is not getting caught, but what they do to you. “The main risk is that the Russian military is still there and they do not respect human rights,” he says. According to his count, a thousand residents, including a hundred recently, have been through the “torture chambers,” cells measuring three or four square meters in which they put between 15 and 18 people. At least 10 detainees have reportedly lost their lives there. “It is a police state,” says Orlov, “they want to force people to follow their rules, they want to re-educate them. They like to hit, they feel impunity.” And all this, seasoned with alcohol and drugs.
About 40 percent of the 52,000 people who lived in Energodar are still there. Going out freely is forbidden; you have to cross military checkpoints and pray that you won’t be stopped at the next one. There are also mines in the surrounding area, including the nuclear power plant. Staying there is also dangerous, Orlov says, and because water and electricity are scarce.
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There is a major added risk: the security of the plant – the last incident recorded was a drone attack last April – which is now managed by the Russian company Rosatom. Its six reactors are in cold shutdown, a measure that reduces the risk of a possible accident. The last to do so, in April, was number 4, which had been used to supply heating at Energodar. Since February, Rosatom has required those who want to continue working at the facility to sign a new contract with the Russian state-owned company; 2,000 employees have done so, despite many others who have left the plant. Before the invasion, the plant had 11,000 workers.
Mila, 43, worked at the plant for a decade, but had been doing other jobs for some time when the Russian armoured vehicles arrived. It is because of these jobs and because she says she is on Moscow’s “black list” that she prefers not to reveal her surname. Mila feels anguish. As she speaks, her large eyes fill with tears. She opens and closes them slowly, to digest what she is saying. She fled across the country seven months after the occupation after learning that the Russian secret service (FSB) was looking for her, but she left something very valuable behind, her parents. “It is difficult for my mental health and I have asked for help because I feel guilty for not being able to convince them.” And she did not succeed because they believed that Energodar would be liberated. They were wrong.
Now, this woman waits for her parents to call her, because for safety reasons she cannot do so. There is a somewhat remote chance that some neighbours still use the conventional line. “Life there is very complicated,” says Mila, “you can no longer trust even your neighbour.” Because, she continues, he could be pro-Russian, or he could be a spy or perhaps he arrived from Russia after the invasion. Her parents confess to her that they are worried about the future, that they had to accept having Russian passports in order to go to the doctor and buy medicine. “They are older and they need it,” she continues. She also keeps in touch with some friends who had to stay because their parents could no longer even walk. They all agree: people remain sitting in their houses to avoid running into Russian patrols on the street.
Ivan Samoidiuk, 61, deputy mayor of Energodar, is a witness and victim of the harshest repressive system established in the city. Samoidiuk, with grey hair, like his carefully shaved beard, spent 333 days under arrest. “The same would have happened to Dmitry [Orlov] “If he hadn’t left,” he says. He didn’t want to cooperate either. Just a few weeks after occupying the city, the Russian forces put this mayor in a hole where he saw almost everything. When asked about the torture, he smiles as if it were already an open secret: “They are very good. They come to the room and play the music very loud, stupid songs repeated 100 times on a loop. They usually hit you and tell you things like they have conquered Kiev, when you don’t know anything in there.” The deputy mayor saw two people taken away in black boxes.
―What was going through your head?
―They exhaust your logic.
On February 23 last year, he was blindfolded and put in a car. He began a 24-hour journey, which he believed took him through Melitopol, 100 kilometres to the south-east, through Taganrog in Russian territory, and was released at the border crossing with the Ukrainian province of Sumi. “I lost a year of my life, but thank God I survived.”
While Samoidiuk remained under arrest, hundreds of local residents marched in the streets to demand his release and protest the Russian occupation. The hunt for those loyal to Ukraine had already begun. In July of that year, Maxim – not his real name – 41, a former worker at the nuclear plant, learned from his wife that the Russians were looking for him. He had been one of the organizers of the demonstrations. The next day, he took four things and left; his wife would follow him later. The routine of many former colleagues, as he says, is now limited to going from home to the plant, returning, sleeping, and back to work. There is nothing else. Strongly built, careful in his story – “this is for you, but don’t write it down,” he says on several occasions – Maxim has cut off communication with those who signed with Rosatom because he no longer knows “which side they are on.” He admits, however, that many are simply trying to survive.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult to leave there without a passport. [ruso] “Or a contract,” he continues his account, quietly, “they can stop you and put you under arrest for 10 days.” Two months ago, someone managed to do just that, leaving Energodar. According to Maxim’s account, he describes empty streets, where it is dangerous to even “look into the eyes” of someone approaching from the front. The latest development: members of the FSB and Russian soldiers patrolling the city in plain clothes.
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