The general manager of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been arrested by a Russian patrol, state nuclear company Energoatom president Petro Kotin said in a statement on Saturday.
The General Director, Ihor Murashov, was in his vehicle leaving the factory when “he was stopped, taken out of the car and blindfolded and taken in an unknown direction. At the moment there is no information about his fate”, said Kotin.
“Murashov is a licensed person and bears the primary and exclusive responsibility for the nuclear and radiation safety of the Zaporizhzhya NPP,” Kotin said, adding that his ban “endangers the operational safety of Ukraine and the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.”
Kotin called on the Russians to release Murashov and asked the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, to “release” him.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs “strongly condemns the illegal detention” of Murashov in a statement published on its website on Saturday.
