Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency visit the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in 2022. (International Atomic Energy Agency)
Ukraine’s military intelligence said the head of security at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant died when his car exploded.
The blast killed Andrii Korotkyi early Friday in the city of Enerhodar, where the plant is located, the HUR service said in a website statement that accused him of collaborating with Russian forces that control the facility. While it didn’t say it carried out the killing, the HUR posted a video allegedly showing the explosion on its X social-media account and said “just retribution awaits every war criminal.”
The explosion occurred two days after a car bomb killed a Ukrainian former judge, Vitalii Lomeiko, in Russian-held Berdiansk, with the HUR labeling him a “traitor.”
Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened a murder case into the death of Korotkyi in a website statement on Friday. Russian officials at Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, also confirmed the incident.
Russian troops occupied Zaporizhzhia early in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday reinforced warnings over safety risks after disclosing that the plant lost supply from its only remaining back-up power line for 36 hours earlier this week.
“The off-site power situation remains a deep source of concern,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement. The disruption “shows that the situation is not improving in this regard, on the contrary.”
The United Nations atomic watchdog and Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly warned that fighting around Zaporizhzhia poses an urgent risk, particularly to substations that feed the nuclear plant with power needed to keep systems running. The IAEA last month took the unusual step of expanding its monitoring mission to include substations.
