World
Russian occupiers rule Ukraine’s nuclear plant through force, fear: Sources
![Russian occupiers rule Ukraine’s nuclear plant through force, fear: Sources Russian occupiers rule Ukraine’s nuclear plant through force, fear: Sources](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2022-10-14T114217Z_732760502_RC2X0X9B5YY2_RTRMADP_3_UKRAINE-CRISIS-NUCLEAR-ZAPORIZHZHIA-1691576240.jpg?resize=1920,1440)
On the eighth day of Russia’s war in Ukraine, March 3, 2022, for the first time in history, an operating nuclear station was taken over militarily.
“We couldn’t believe it,” an engineer who worked at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant told Al Jazeera.
“We completely denied it, one can’t just seize a nuclear station, it’s the safest place on the planet.”
On that fateful Friday, sirens that sounded like wounded animals wailed endlessly, and shells flew in the night sky.
During Moscow’s efforts to seize the power station, which once produced a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity, two Russian tanks barraged the station’s walls with bloodcurdling thuds.
Ukrainian security staffers yelled into a bullhorn for hours to “stop bombing a nuclear site”.
A fire erupted at a station’s training centre and dark plumes of smoke blanketed the forest around the company town, Enerhodar.
Horrified residents began building barricades and blocking entrances into their apartment buildings as armed fighters ran around the town of about 51,000 people.
For this story, Al Jazeera interviewed two engineers and another resident who have since fled Enerhodar but regularly keep in touch with old neighbours and colleagues there.
Amid the takeover, luckily, reactors and spent fuel storage were not hit and radiation levels didn’t spike because Russian “experts consulted these a******s on where they can shoot and where they can’t,” one of the engineers said, referring to pro-Russia Ukrainians.
The worst he and his colleagues feared was a replay of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Encased in protective zirconium, uranium fuel heats the reactor and a water coolant that turns into steam, rotating turbines and generating electricity.
But the casing can melt at a high temperature and start a “para-zirconium reaction” that turns each gram of water into several cubic metres of highly flammable hydrogen.
“Once it has begun, you can’t stop in, it will keep heating up, will heat up itself until everything is blown to freaking pieces,” one of the engineers said.
Thousands have since left Enerhodar.
Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday on the feared Chechen unit which polices the occupied Ukrainian nuclear town.
The technicians that signed up to work under Russian occupiers were well rewarded, one of the engineers said, claiming those who remained received two salaries in two currencies – for doing one job for a period.
The occupiers paid workers in the Russian rouble, while they still received the hryvnia from Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom – until it found out about their “volunteer collaboration”, fired them, and stopped transferring wages.
“They felt just like sheikhs,” one of the engineers said.
“All the ladies started getting beauty injections, or doing things they could spend a lot of money on, something you could buy right now.”
The words seem more apt to depict a boomtown amid a gold rush and seem light years away from the realities of the Russian-Ukrainian war – and especially the life in the potential epicentre of a nuclear disaster.
‘The main danger will be new Russian attacks’
In the days and weeks that followed the takeover, Moscow deployed hundreds of servicemen and Chechen national guardsmen to the station.
They arrived with multiple rocket launchers, armoured vehicles, landmines and other weaponry often placed between the station’s blocks or in Soviet-era bunkers.
The Russians shelled Kyiv-controlled areas with impunity knowing Ukrainian forces wouldn’t hit back.
Moscow’s troops wanted to redirect the flow of electricity from Europe’s largest nuclear station to energy-starved Crimea.
But their attempts failed because of damage to high-voltage lines and a Crimean electrical substation, and the complexity of synchronising the station’s output with the Russian power grid.
Because of safety concerns, all of the station’s six reactors have been shut down amid the war.
Most Ukrainians nationwide live in apartments with central heating systems, but as Moscow launched hundreds of cruise missiles and drones this past winter on critical infrastructure, they were deprived of heat, power and water.
The power deficit that led to blackouts and rationing has gradually been compensated by bolstered operations at three other nuclear power stations – and a twofold drop in Ukraine’s industrial production, Oksana Ishchuk, executive director of the Center for Global Studies Strategy XXI, a think tank in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.
In the coming winter season, when central heating will be badly needed, Ukraine will make do without the power generated by the Zaporizhzhia station, she said, but warned that “the main danger will be new Russian attacks on critical energy infrastructure facilities”.
Money and ‘heroism’
Even though the Zaporizhzhia station does not generate electricity, thousands of staffers are still needed there to monitor its infrastructure and the constant cooling of the reactors.
Aided by Russian servicemen and intelligence officers, Enerhodar’s Moscow-installed “administration” tried sticks and carrots to keep 11,000 Ukrainian staffers at work.
The stick involved abduction, detention and torture, according to Ukrainian officials and employees of the plant.
Even so, “Ukrainians at the power station act with dignity and refuse to cooperate,” Energoatom, a state-run conglomerate in charge of Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants, said in May.
Some workers disappeared without a trace as unmarked graves began dotting the forest.
Hundreds more allegedly spent days, weeks or months in overcrowded cells, sleeping in shifts.
Sometimes, a detainee agreed to falsely “confess” in “directing Ukrainian artillery fire” or “spying” in return for freedom and “clemency”, one of the engineers said.
“You memorise the text, then say it on camera. They release you … Then they publish [a story in pro-Kremlin media outlets] that you are so horrible, but they’re so generous.”
Several, however, agreed to cooperate, because of the carrot – hefty salaries.
Some justified staying by claiming they were “responsible for nuclear safety” one of the engineers said ironically, “that while they’re there, they won’t allow any lawlessness to happen, that they stayed on like heroes”.
And then, there are the pro-Russian Ukrainians.
The older ones feel nostalgic about their Soviet-era youth, others support the Kremlin’s narrative and hold Kyiv responsible for instigating the war.
But their alleged “collaboration” goes beyond simply acceptance of Moscow’s viewpoint.
“They snitch on pro-Ukrainian neighbours, report those who left [the occupied areas] so that Russians can rob their apartments or move in there,” a fugitive Enerhodar resident whose pro-Russian parents stayed behind, told Al Jazeera.
Some 3,500 staffers, or about one in three, are understood to have signed contracts with the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom.
‘A gift of energy’
Enerhodar, whose name means “a gift of energy,” used to be one of Ukraine’s most affluent towns.
Residents had access to quality healthcare, enjoyed discounted trips to the seaside, attended theatre festivals and music shows, and sent their children to sports schools, including a boxing school that produced several national champions.
The bravest ones even enjoyed year-round swimming in two ponds whose water cooled the reactors and never froze in winter.
The ponds were home to tilapia and Asian catfish introduced for “sanitary purposes” – to eat algae and secure the cleanliness of turbines.
The staffers’ incentives were not just monetary.
The importance of nuclear generation rose after the 2014 separatist uprising in the Donbas that largely deprived Ukraine of access to coal for thermal stations.
Two years ago, the station’s reactors were retrofitted and modernised, and churned out electricity at maximum capacity.
“There was plenty of work, but we understood how important it all was,” one of the engineers said.
After the Russian takeover, the town deteriorated.
Residents spent hours in bread lines amid food shortages.
A couple of months later, Moscow-appointed authorities began shipping substandard, pricier foodstuffs from Crimea.
Local entrepreneurs also bootlegged and sold it – along with cigarettes, alcohol and medical drugs – from the boots of their cars.
However, the station’s staffers who agreed to work with Rosatom had plenty of money – especially the older, retired ones who collected pensions and salaries from Kyiv and Moscow while continuing to work.
Russian servicemen and separatists from Donbas allegedly drank too much, and the Moscow-installed “authorities” banned the sale of alcohol, a step that triggered the production of homemade moonshine.
The new lifestyle felt like a throwback to the early 1990s when the newly independent Ukraine adapted to a market economy.
Economically, the situation was even worse than the gradual separation of the rebel-controlled “People’s Republics” in the Donbas.
“The turnover of goods and money is being reoriented towards Russia as there is no communication with Ukraine-controlled areas,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.
The occupation even led to small environmental disasters.
Because the now shut-down reactors no longer produce warm water, the tilapia and Asian catfish in the cooling ponds died and washed ashore.
Then some of the bored occupants began racing their cars on the artificial hills made of soot and other waste from Enerhodar’s thermal power station.
The races cause highly toxic dust to rise and pollute the air, Enerhodar’s exiled Mayor Dmytro Orlov said in mid-July.
A narrow escape
As fighting intensifies, leaving Enerhodar for Kyiv-controlled areas has become next to impossible.
Russian forces have been accused of shelling cars with civilians, blaming their deaths on Ukraine, and supplying lists of the most essential staffers to checkpoints.
Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify these claims. Throughout the war, Moscow has denied targeting civilians.
“The departure is maximally complicated and sometimes it’s simply impossible to leave the occupied areas, especially without money,” one of the engineers said.
He managed to leave by the narrowest of margins.
The man and his family drove via Russia-occupied areas, including the nearly destroyed city of Mariupol, which resembled “pure hell”.
“People sit and drink coffee, the sign [on the building’s] first floor says, ‘a lounge cafeteria,’ but the rest of the building is black, and there are no more floors left,” he said describing a drive through downtown Mariupol.
They entered the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don one day before the Wagner mercenary company briefly seized it on May 23.
Then they drove north and west to enter the European Union after an exhausting, hours-long interrogation by Russian intelligence officers, and finally crossed back into Ukraine.
Still on Energoatom’s payroll, the engineer is settling in Kyiv but is ready to leave for Enerhodar once the Russians are pushed out or retreat the way they had left several occupied areas last year.
He compares his rapid-response crew to paratroopers that must move fast to retake the station and prevent a disaster.
“The situation will be critical,” he said.
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World
Asif Kapadia on Taking Aim at the Rich and Powerful in Dystopian Docudrama ‘2073’: ‘If I Don’t Work Again, at Least I Made This Movie’
![Asif Kapadia on Taking Aim at the Rich and Powerful in Dystopian Docudrama ‘2073’: ‘If I Don’t Work Again, at Least I Made This Movie’ Asif Kapadia on Taking Aim at the Rich and Powerful in Dystopian Docudrama ‘2073’: ‘If I Don’t Work Again, at Least I Made This Movie’](https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2073_Reel_01_V_009741_STATIC_WIDE_GOLDEN_GATE_BRIDGE_WILDFIRES_RED_SK_4828.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1)
Asif Kapadia sees a future vision of the world where “chairwoman” Ivanka Trump is celebrating her 30th year as leader of a nightmarish fascist police state that was once America, a land mostly reduced to rubble following an unknown “catastrophe” that occurred in 2036.
“It’s kind of a joke, but it’s also not a joke,” says the British filmmaker of mentioning Donald Trump’s daughter in “2073,” his chilling docudrama about the dystopia humanity is potentially hurtling towards and the very real and very contemporary factors concerning politics, the environment, corruption, race and technology that he says are propelling us in that direction.
“Because if you look at American politics, you have certain families that just keep being in power — the number of people that have come from a tiny gene pool is insane,” he says.
While the inclusion of Ivanka may be a little splash of humor, the rest of “2073” — which comes backed by Neon, Double Agent and Film4 and is world premiering in Venice on Tuesday — offers little else to be tickled by. The film is what Kapadia says is his response to the world — and the entertainment industry — having got to a “place where people cannot say anything” that criticizes the status quo or those in power without risking losing their jobs or worse.
And so “2073” says a lot, a whole lot. The film essentially lays the blame for the impending disaster — be it nuclear war, climate change or whatever it might be — at the foot of leaders, demagogues, tech billionaires and the 1% and what they’re doing to the planet and society. Alongside the Trumps, there’s the Murdochs, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, Mohammed Bin Salman, Narendra Modi, the Koch brothers, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and many more, spliced alongside news clips and amateur footage from the last couple of decades showing examples of police brutality, rising fascism, the refugee crisis, mass detentions, bombings and wild fires.
Originally the project — which came about during lockdown (Kapadia put out a tweet asking for help and soon gathered a team of researchers from around the world) — was to be a “doc set in the future where everything from the future will be factual and created out of bits of the present.” But he soon decided to use his drama background to mix the two, creating a version of life in 2073 in which Samantha Morton plays a mute survivor besieged by nightmare visions of the past and living underground as surveillance drones patrol the surface.
This past is pieced together using “footage from around 60 different countries, which I made to look like one place,” says Kapadia. Some of footage is extremely recent. In the opening scenes revealing this earth-shattering catastrophe, we see clips of recent devastation in Gaza.
“Having been doing this for a while, if you feel like you’re onto something in a horrible way, the world comes into synch with the film,” he says. The war in Gaza, plus the rise of AI and the growing feeling that the next presidential election could be “the end of democracy in the U.S.” all began after he started making the film. “And then a few weeks ago in England we had all these riots.”
“2073” may seem like an unexpected feature from the Oscar-winning documentarian best-known for “Amy,” “Senna” and “Diego Maradona,” but he claims this trilogy of profiles all came about “by accident,” and were each infused with his previous experience in drama and fiction and were each made that way. “’Senna’ is an action movie, ‘Amy’ is a musical, a Bollywood film, and ‘Diego Maradona’ is a gangster film set in Naples,” he says.
But “2073” — an experimental dystopian thriller — still feels like a major key change for the director, a highly provocative and uncomfortable to watch feature with global themes that he hopes will make people realize that “what’s happening over there will get closer and closer and eventually come to you.”
As he notes: “And if you don’t think that’s a problem, then it’s just a movie. But if it is a problem, then you, me, us … we’ve got to do something.”
Kapadia is already among the most outspoken filmmakers on social media when it comes to discussing politics and especially in condemning Israel for the bloodshed in Gaza. While this hasn’t appeared to have hindered his career in the way it has others, he says “2073” — given the topics and the very powerful, very wealthy people it discusses — might.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have made films and in what I do I’ve been successful,” he explains. “So honestly, I went into this going, ‘I’m going to chuck it all in, I’m not going to be afraid to say what I see and if I don’t work again, fine, at least I made this movie.’ ”
World
Two U.S. soldiers ambushed, assaulted by mob of Turkish nationalists: 'Yankee, go home!'
![Two U.S. soldiers ambushed, assaulted by mob of Turkish nationalists: 'Yankee, go home!' Two U.S. soldiers ambushed, assaulted by mob of Turkish nationalists: 'Yankee, go home!'](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/Copy-of-Right-inset-22.png)
A mob of Turkish nationalists attacked U.S. soldiers in western Turkey on Monday, resulting in the arrests of 15 people.
The incident took place in Izmir, which is located on Turkey’s Aegean coast. In a statement, the Izmir governor’s office said the assailants belonged to the Youth Union of Turkey, which is connected to the nationalist Vatan Party.
The governor said that the victims, who were assigned to the USS Wasp, were “physically attacked.” Video posted to social media showed soldiers in civilian clothing yelling for help as they were restrained by a group of anti-American men.
The footage also shows an attacker throwing a plastic bag onto the soldier’s head as the crowd chanted, “Yankee Go Home!”
ISRAEL SHARES DOSSIER SPELLING OUT ALLEGATIONS AGAINST 12 UN EMPLOYEES ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED IN HAMAS ATTACK
Soldiers assigned to the USS Wasp were attacked by Turkish nationalists, according to officials. (Getty Images/iStock)
Five U.S. soldiers intervened during the incident, and authorities eventually arrested all 15 of the men who attacked the soldiers.
The U.S. Embassy in Turkey confirmed the incident in a statement published to social media on Monday, and said that the soldiers are safe.
“We can confirm reports that U.S. service members embarked aboard the USS Wasp were the victims of an assault in İzmir today, and are now safe,” the embassy said.
UN, HUMAN RIGHTS, MEDIA GROUPS RELY ON HAMAS DEATH TOLL IN ‘SYSTEMATIC DECEPTION’: EXPERT
![USS Wasp](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/1200/675/GettyImages-2165869998.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Crew members stand aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD-1) docked at Limassol Port, amid rising tensions in the Middle East, in Limassol, Cyprus, Sunday, August 11, 2024. (Danil Shamkin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“We thank Turkish authorities for their rapid response and ongoing investigation.”
In a statement obtained by Reuters, the Youth Union of Turkey said the attack was “deserved” and criticized U.S. support of Israel.
![Turkish protesters](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/1200/675/GettyImages-1236122537.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Members of the Youth Union of Turkey (TGB) gather outside the U.S. Embassy to protest envoys of 10 countries over remarks on the Osman Kavala case in Ankara, Turkey on October 25, 2021. (Evrim Aydin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“U.S. soldiers who carry the blood of our soldiers and thousands of Palestinians on their hands cannot dirty our country,” the nationalists said. “Every time you step foot in these lands, we will meet you the way you deserve.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
World
Hamas says Gaza captives will return ‘in coffins’ if Israel continues raids
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Group’s armed wing Qassam Brigades issues statement, two days after bodies of six captives are recovered from a Gaza tunnel by Israeli forces.
The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas says captives held in Gaza would return to Israel “in coffins” if Israeli military pressure continues, warning that “new instructions” had been given to its fighters guarding the captives in case Israeli troops approach.
“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s insistence on freeing the captives through military pressure instead of reaching a deal means they will go back to their families in coffins. Their families have to choose between receiving them dead or alive,” Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, said in a statement on Monday, two days after the bodies of six captives were recovered by Israel.
“Netanyahu and the army are fully responsible for the death of the captives after they intentionally hindered any prisoners’ exchange deal,” it said.
The statement from the Qassam Brigades came shortly after Netanyahu said the six captives whose bodies were recovered from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah area had been “executed” by Hamas.
“I ask for your forgiveness for not bringing them back alive,” Netanyahu said during a televised news conference earlier on Monday as protests over the deaths continued for a second day in Israel.
“We were close, but we didn’t succeed. Hamas will pay a very heavy price for this,” he added.
Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq said the six captives were killed in Israeli air strikes.
Meanwhile, protests in Israel over the deaths of the captives continued with angry demonstrators saying they could have been returned alive if Netanyahu’s government had signed a ceasefire with Hamas.
However, political analyst Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera that a nationwide strike in Israel on Monday and rising public anger will not make a real difference to end the war in Gaza and free the captives.
“It seems that for Netanyahu, the alternative – which is his personal, political and personal life – is more important than the lives of the Israeli captives,” Eldar said, adding that despite a large number of protesters, “the Israeli right and radical right” who support the government “have the upper hand”.
“The government and the prime minister are now on the defensive,” Ori Goldberg, an expert on Israeli politics, told Al Jazeera. “This is about momentum now.”
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden also said Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a deal for the release of the captives.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Biden was asked whether he thought Netanyahu was doing enough to reach a deal. Biden said, “No.” He did not elaborate.
Months of stop-start negotiations mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to reach an accord on a Gaza ceasefire proposal laid out by Biden in May.
Hamas wants an agreement to end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza while Netanyahu says the war can only end once Hamas is defeated.
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and government adviser, told Al Jazeera that it is Netanyahu who “absolutely has no interest in a hostage deal or ceasefire”.
“Those who are shocked and devastated and angered about what happened should not be surprised because this is exactly what the [Israeli] defence minister [Yoav Gallant] and all of us were warning would happen,” Pinkas said.
“His [Netanyahu’s] and only his reluctance to engage in a deal is what made all this happen.”
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