Russia appoints new head of annexed Zaporiyia nuclear power plant

Moscow, Nov. 30. Russia has appointed as the new director of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant of Zaporiyia, the largest in Europe and located in the region of the same name that the Kremlin annexed last September without fully controlling it, a former chief engineer of the Ukrainian state atomic company Energoatom.

The new director of the plant, occupied by Russian troops since March 4, is Yuri Chernichuk, said the advisor to the general director of Russia's state-owned Rosenergoatom, Renat Karchaa.

"All management staff, including the chief engineer, his deputies and in general all key positions, today at the station are occupied by representatives of the previous team that signed a contract with the operating company, so I suggest that the gentlemen from across the river and their curators finally calm down," he argued.

The power plant is located in Energodar, on the left bank of the Dnieper River, and just opposite the town of Marganets in the Ukrainian-controlled Dnipropetrovsk region, as is the nearby regional capital, Zaporiyia.

Russia often accuses the Ukrainian army of shelling the plant from Marganets, while Kiev claims that it is Russian forces themselves that are attacking the plant, for whose safety the government of President Vladimir Zelensky and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) fear.

The former general director of the plant, Igor Muashov, was kidnapped last September by the Russian Army, as Energoatom denounced at the time, and "later expelled to Ukraine", according to Karchaa, who maintained that the senior official "was caught collaborating with the Security Service" of Kiev. EFE

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