Ongoing terror as Russia passes grotesque 'sentence' against abducted Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant employee

62-year-old Serhiy Spartesny has been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment on preposterous ‘spying’ charges laid over a year after he was abducted from occupied Enerhodar.  Spartesny is one of several employees of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant [ZNNP] whom the Russians have seized and very likely tortured since they attacked and gained control of the plant soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Serhiy Spartesny was the head of a turbine department shift at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, and remained after Russia’s full-scale invasion, while his wife, Natalia left for government-controlled territory.  Armed Russians burst into his home in Enerhodar on 18 July, 2023 and took him to the Russian-controlled ‘police station’.  He has been held prisoner ever since, although for a long time nothing was known of his whereabouts or why he had been abducted.  In April 2024, the Media Initiative for Human Rights learned from a former civilian hostage who had been held prisoner with Spartesny.  He said that the Russians were accusing Spartesny of having posted pro-Ukrainian leaflets in occupied Enerhodar; of having, at the request of Ukraine’s Security Service spied on FSB officers and collaborators; and of having trained members of the Territorial Defence.   While none of the above would in any way warrant charges under Russian legislation of ‘spying’, Natalia Spartesna dismissed the accusation. She knew from her own sources that the hostages were held in appalling conditions, with mould on their clothing, and were not taking out into fresh air at all. Despite health issues, her husband was receiving no treatment or medicine.  She had been told that the Russians put bags over the hostages’ heads, attached wires with scotch tape around their neck and sent electric currents through their bodies, an excruciating form of torture to which, she feared, her husband had also been subjected.

In late August 2024, the occupation ‘authorities’ announced that Spartesny was facing ‘trial’ on spying charges, illegally laid under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code.  It was claimed that the Ukrainian, living in his own native Ukraine, had, in May 2023, “acted against the security of the Russian Federation”.  He was alleged to have collected information about the types and registration numbers of the cars used by employees of one of the occupation ‘enforcement agencies’ and passed the information to Ukrainian enforcement officers.   This could, it was asserted, have been used to fire at the position of this supposed ‘state structure’.

The next report from the same illegal ‘Zaporizhzhia prosecutor’ stated on 20 September that Serhiy Spartesny had been sentenced by the occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ to 12 years’ maximum-security imprisonment.  No mention was ever made of the fact that Spartesny had been abducted back in July 2023, and seemingly held for well over a year without any formal procedural measures being taken.  Such measures would, in any case, be illegal as Russia is an occupying state who has no right, under international law, to apply its legislation against Ukrainians, nor, of course, to abduct them and hold them incommunicado.  It is likely that Spartesny was denied access to an independent lawyer, and that the ‘proceedings’, held behind closed doors, before an unrecognized and illegal occupation structure, grossly violated Spartesny’s right to a fair trial.  

Spartesny was one of two employees of the Zaporizhzhia NNP abducted by the Russians during the summer of 2023.  Enerhodar Mayro Dmytro Orlov reported that Serhiy Potynh, an engineer at the plant, had been seized on 23 June 2023.  There is no information about his whereabouts which is of particular concern since there were grounds for believing, Orlov wrote, that he had been subjected to savage torture.

As well as effectively holding Ukraine and most of Europe hostage through their attack on and occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Russia has, since March 2022, extended its terror to employees of the plant and other residents of Enerhodar. 

See: Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant engineer held and tortured by Russian invaders for over a year

Russia sentences Ukrainian to 12 years on fake Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant ‘terrorism’ charges