Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant guard savagely tortured to blame Ukraine for Russia’s war crimes

Having committed international crimes through its war of aggression and atrocities against Ukraine, Russia is using abductions and torture to try to blame Ukraine for its crimes.

Oleh Morochkovsky from one of the propaganda videos

Almost three years after 32-year-old Oleh Morochkovsky was abducted by Russian military from near his home in Enerhodar, more details have emerged of the torture he endured, with his captors using electric currents attached to sensitive parts of the body and savage beatings.  Neither the torture methods, nor the staged ‘trial’ are, strictly, new, but they are worth spelling out, especially since the torture was applied to force Morochkovsky, a guard at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, to place the blame for Russia’s shelling of the largest nuclear power station in Europe on Ukraine.

Morochkovsky was working as a guard at the power plant in February 2022, when Russian began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  In early March, the Russians first shelled the nuclear power plant, and then seized control of it, also occupying Enerhodar, the city built to service it.  

Morochkovsky’s mother, Oksana, has told the ZMINA Human Rights Centre, that her son had not wanted to leave Enerhodar, and his job, although he opposed Russia’s invasion and occupation, and did not want to take Russian citizenship, despite pressure from the invaders.

He was abducted on 3 August 2022 from a Russian checkpoint at the entrance to Enerhodar on his way to work.  The Russians seized both him and his car, although the latter, smashed up, was later returned.  Oleh’s mother learned of his abduction from her former daughter-in-law who rang to say that he had been seized with colleagues, and that only the colleagues had been released.  He was being held in a SIZO [remand prison] in the occupation ‘police’ station, his ex-wife had been told, and was being relentlessly tortured.

The Russians were not content with torturing a fake ‘confession’ out of Morochkovsky.  They also turned up at his home, in order to stage his fake ‘arrest’.  His mother-in-law was forced out of the house and made to stand with her face to the wall.  They threatened to shoot and kill her if she made any movement.  This stunt was staged in front of Russian journalists who arrived with military men, in Rosgvardia uniform. 

It was earlier reported that Morochkovsky had been abducted on 11 August 2022, with this being the day that Russian propaganda media published his videoed ‘confession’.  He had, it transpires, been held incommunicado for a week, and mercilessly tortured.  In all cases where people have since been released, or at least able to see independent lawyers, they have retracted such ‘confessions’ and spoken of the torture used to extract them.  In very many cases, they have been forced to memorize their ‘confessions’ and punished if they deviate.  Several civilian hostages or political prisoners have been forced to give multiple, slightly varying, ‘confessions’.

Morochkovsky could be heard claiming that, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an acquaintance with whom he had studied and served in Ukraine’s Armed Gorces had got in touch and, purportedly, proposed that he pass on the coordinates of Russian military. According to the alleged ‘confession’ extracted within a proper lawyer while Morochkovsky held incommunicado and without a lawyer, Morochkovsky had agreed to pass on information.   On the video, he also asserted that Kyiv’s accusations against Russia of shelling ZNPP were “devoid of logic”. 

ZMINA reports that one of the propaganda videos also showed another man, Oleksiy Danylov, who was supposedly also ‘detained’ for passing on information about places of deployment of Russian troops to Ukraine’s Security Service.  Both Danylov, and Morochkovsky repeat Russian propaganda lines claiming that Ukraine’s Armed Forces shelled the power station.  If Morochkovsky is heard only claiming to have provided Ukraine with the coordinates of military vehicles on the territory of ZNPP, Danylov’s ‘confession’ goes much further.  He is claimed to have asserted that the shelling of the territory of ZNPP and Enerhodar came from Ukrainian positions and to have thought that the coordinates were needed by Ukrainian military “to seize the plant”.  It may, in fact, be significant that nothing at all is known about Danylov.  

It was learned in early April 2024 that the illegal occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ had, at the end of March that year, sentenced two Ukrainians from Enerhodar to eleven years.  Both Oleh Morochkovsky and Dmytro Yevsieliev were convicted of ‘spying’ under Russian legislation {Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code}, although the impugned actions, even if they had taken place, were by Ukrainians living in their own country and informing the country’s Armed Forces of the movements of invading forces. 

Russia claimed that Yevsieliev had, from March until June 2023 gathered information about the places of deployment of Russian national guard [Rosgvardia] military personnel, weapons and military equipment in [occupied] Zaporizhzhia oblast and had sent this information to an officer of Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU].

Morochkovsky was accused of the same, with this allegedly from March to July 2022 and supposedly passed to a member of Ukrainian Armed Forces acting on behalf of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence.

In one ominous, and very cynical, move, the Russian occupation ‘police’ claimed, in March 2023, that Morochkovsky had been released.  In fact, he was first held prisoner in Enerhodar, then in occupied Crimea where the supposed ‘trial’ is, in fact, likely to have taken place.  He is now imprisoned in Russia’s Saratov oblast.  It is particularly disturbing, given the size of the sentence, that virtually nothing seems to be known about Dmytro Yevsieliev. 

According to Dmytro Orlov, there are around 30 Enerhodar residents whom Russia abducted, with many employees of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. 

Source: The Information Portal of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group