(VIENNA, AUSTRIA) – Ukrainian officials and families of detained nuclear power plant workers have appealed to international organisations for help after describing alleged torture and illegal detention of civilians by Russian forces in occupied areas of Ukraine.
The appeal was presented in Vienna during a campaign aimed at securing the release of Ukrainian civilians held in Russian custody. Testimonies were provided by former detainees and relatives of workers from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant located near the city of Enerhodar in southern Ukraine.
Ivan Samoydiuk, deputy mayor of Enerhodar, said he was abducted by Russian forces on 19 March 2022 while delivering medicine and food to local residents. He said he spent 333 days in detention and was transferred between several holding facilities.
Samoydiuk said detainees were subjected to severe torture and violence. He described beatings, electrocution and other forms of abuse that he said were used against prisoners. According to his account, detainees were frequently beaten until they lost consciousness and some died as a result of their injuries.
He also said prisoners were deliberately deprived of food, with starvation widely used during detention.
For 185 days he was held in a solitary cell where lights remained on continuously and loud music was played to drown out the sounds of other detainees being interrogated.
Later he was transferred to a detention facility known by detainees as a “yama”, or pit, where prisoners were repeatedly beaten during interrogations as part of what he described as a Russian filtration system used to obtain information.
Samoydiuk said he witnessed the deaths of two detainees during torture and described the body of one young man remaining on the floor of a garage for several days before being removed.
He said civilians were treated even more harshly than prisoners of war and warned that many detainees did not survive.
Samoydiuk was later released in a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia involving around 100 prisoners of war.
Since his release he has campaigned for the freedom of 35 civilians abducted from Enerhodar who have been accused of espionage or sabotage and sentenced to prison terms in Russian penal colonies.
Among those detained are technical specialists from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, including Oleksii Brazhnyk, Serhii Spartesnyi and Ruslan Lavryk.
Relatives say the workers were detained after refusing to cooperate with Russian authorities following the occupation of the plant.
Sviatlana Brazhnyk said her husband Oleksii was abducted from his workplace at the plant on 21 September 2022, six months after Russian forces seized the facility.
She said he had called her earlier that day to wish her a happy birthday but never contacted her again.
According to her account, three masked men took him from his office at the nuclear power plant. He was later held in a detention facility in Enerhodar and then transferred to what former detainees describe as a semi secret detention site.
Information about his condition has come only from former detainees who were later released.
Sviatlana said her husband and other detained workers were forced to dig trenches for Russian military positions near the front line.
She said he later suffered severe health problems including internal bleeding linked to a stomach ulcer.
According to information she received from other detainees, he was at one point thrown into a trench after Russian soldiers believed he might have tuberculosis. She said he survived the incident.
Another detainee, Serhii Spartesnyi, had worked for four decades at the plant as a turbine chief.
His wife Natalia said he remained at the facility after it was occupied in order to help maintain nuclear safety.
She said Russian forces restricted access to parts of the plant, making routine safety checks difficult. Workers were also placed under surveillance and pressured to sign contracts with Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom and obtain Russian passports.
Spartesnyi refused to sign such a contract and was later detained by Russian forces. Natalia said he was held for eleven months without charge before being transferred between detention facilities.
She said he was kept in a basement cell that was cold, damp and poorly ventilated. During detention he was beaten, suffocated with a plastic bag and subjected to electric shocks.
She also described a practice referred to by detainees as “zerofication”, where prisoners were forced to walk through minefields. According to her account Spartesnyi was sent into a mined area in the occupied Kherson region and ordered to walk through it.
He later faced espionage charges and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Another worker, engineer Ruslan Lavryk, was responsible for radio and television systems at the nuclear plant.
His son Vladyslav said Russian forces repeatedly pressured his father to sign a contract with Rosatom. When he refused, armed officers entered the family home in June 2024 and detained him.
Vladyslav said the family received no information about his whereabouts for about a month before learning he was alive.
He said his father had been held in prisons and detention cells where he was beaten, electrocuted and denied medical treatment despite severe health problems.
On 24 September 2025 Lavryk was transferred to occupied Crimea where he was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Ukrainian officials say the detention of nuclear specialists has contributed to a mass departure of workers from Enerhodar.
Before the Russian occupation the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant employed around 11,000 staff. Officials say only about 3,000 employees with access to the facility remain.
Ukraine’s representative in Vienna, Yurii Vitrenko, said the situation presents serious risks for nuclear safety.
He said the presence of Russian forces at the plant creates a direct threat to safety and security and warned that the detention of technical staff could affect the safe operation of the facility.
Vitrenko said the situation at the plant represents a wider challenge created by the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory.
Khrystyna Levchenko of the Nuclear Power and Industry Workers Union of Ukraine said nuclear facilities require highly trained specialists working in stable psychological conditions.
She said safe operation of nuclear reactors is impossible if workers are threatened or forced to work under armed supervision.
Families of detained workers travelled to Vienna to appeal to diplomats at the United Nations Office and officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency to pressure the Russian authorities to release the prisoners.
The appeal was aimed in particular at the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, who has been involved in discussions with Moscow regarding the future of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Ukrainian officials say the detention of nuclear workers and the presence of Russian forces at the facility represent both a humanitarian crisis and a potential risk to nuclear safety in Europe.
IVAN Samoydiuk will never forget witnessing fellow Ukrainian men being raped with baseball bats by Russian soldiers.
The deputy mayor of the city of Enerhodar, in the Zaporizhzhia region, was among the captured civilians who have faced some of the most sickening torture documented during Russia’s full-scale invasion.
He was abducted on March 19, 2022, while delivering medicine and food to people, and subsequently spent 333 days flung from one torture chamber to another.
“These were the most horrible days in my life,” he tells The Sun in Vienna, on the sidelines of a major campaign to help release Ukrainian civilians in Russian captivity.
“One thing that is hard for me to forget – I recall it all the time – is that for the Russians who tortured us, this is not just their job. They get pleasure out of it, they love it.’
