Russia’s supreme court on 11 March 2026 upheld the 13-year sentence passed against Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant engineer Serhiy Korzh. The ‘court’ saw no reason to question the verdict and massive sentence despite the evident illegality of the charges against him, the fact that he had been abducted and held almost totally incommunicado for over two years before the sentence from an illegal occupation ‘court’, and strong evidence that he had been subjected to torture.
Serhiy Korzh (b. 14 July 1976) will be turning 50 shortly, having spent almost four years in Russian captivity. Both he and his twin brother, Oleksandr Korzh are engineers, who were working in the nuclear power industry. Serhiy Korzh worked at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant [ZNPP] which the Russian invaders stormed and gained control of on 4 March 2022. Russia’s methods of terror at the plant and in neighbouring Enerhodar began almost immediately with Serhiy Korzh one of at least thirteen ZNPP employees abducted and since sentenced on grotesque ‘spying’, ‘treason’ or ‘terrorism’ charges.
Serhiy and Oleksandr lived in different villages near Enerhodar and were seized by the Russian invaders on 4 September 2022, as Oleksandr was accompanying his brother home after a visit. Their sister, Liudmyla recounted that the Russians saw something “they didn’t like” on Serhiy’s telephone and took both men prisoner. Oleksandr Korzh was released three days later and told his family that he had expected to be killed three times. He had been held bound, with the Russians threatening and firing their weapons right near his ear. Oleksandr was seized again on 16 December 2022 and held incommunicado until he was released in March 2025 but forced to leave occupied territory within ten days.
At first the men’s families knew nothing about their whereabouts, however in the summer of 2023, it was learned that both brothers had been taken to SIZO No. 2 in occupied Simferopol. This was one of two remand prisons opened in Crimea after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. SIZO-2 is the more notorious, with it used primarily for political prisoners and civilian hostages abducted from Ukrainian territory seized in 2022. It is believed to be under the control of Russia’s FSB.
In November 2022, Russia’s state propaganda channel Rossiya-24 posted a video in which Serhiy Korzh was shown supposedly ‘confessing’ to having directed Ukrainian military fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Even without Liudmyla confirming that her brother looked in a terrible state and had clearly been tortured, such a ‘confession’ would be surreal. Serhiy was working at the plant himself, his family lived close by and, as an engineer, he would be in no doubt about the catastrophic consequences of any military strike on the nuclear facilities.
The ‘videoed confession’ was part of a series of such attempts by the Russian invaders to claim that Ukraine’s Armed Forces had committed Russian war crimes. Similar methods were applied by Russia’s FSB to extract truly bizarre accusations against Ukraine over Russia’s most heinous crimes in Mariupol. Although very many ‘trials’ and huge sentences are based solely on supposed ‘confessions’, extracted through torture, in other cases, the videoed ‘confessions’ are primarily for propaganda value. That was doubtless the case here, as the eventual indictment was different.
In announcing the sentence on 11 October 2024, the occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional prosecutor’ did not even mention that Serhiy Korzh was an employee of ZNNP. It was claimed that Korzh had, from June to August 2022, gathered information regarding the places where units of the Russian ‘national guard’ and their technology were deployed in Zaporizhzhia oblast, and passed this to an officer of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence. The same sentence is invariably copy-pasted from one such report to another, namely that “the information passed on could have been used to direct strikes against the places where Russian military were deployed.”
The fact that Serhiy Korzh was held incommunicado and tortured for a ‘confession’ that was not even used in the indictment means that there is every reason to doubt that any of this was true. Even if some of it were true, Korzh would have been serving his country by providing Ukraine’s defenders with information about the whereabouts of Russian invaders with them and their military technology being entirely legitimate targets,
There is nothing to suggest that there was a trial in any real sense of the word, with it unclear even whether there were any ‘hearings’ before the illegal occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ on 11 October 2024 (or before) sentenced Korzh to 13 years in a maximum-security prison colony. Korzh was charged with ‘spying’ under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code. He had, clearly, not taken Russian citizenship, with this already a courageous stand, given the massive pressure that all employees of the plant were under.
As well as all of the above details, the ‘judges’ of Russia’s supreme court would certainly have known that Russia, as an occupying state, is prohibited from staging any such prosecutions of Ukrainians under Russian legislation. All are, therefore, fully complicit in the terror that Russia has unleashed on Ukrainian territory and such political persecution of Ukrainian citizens.
Serhiy Korzh is only one of at least 13 Ukrainians from ZNPP now serving huge sentences. Please help to publicize their cases!
Help force Russia to free abducted and tortured Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant employees!
If you have not already signed the petition, please add your name here!
Other victims
Ruslan Lavryk (b. 24.09.1970)
Lilia Kachariova (b. 22.06.1966) and Svitlana Dovhopola (b. 16.02.1962)
Huge sentences and videoed ‘repentance’ in Russia’s mounting terror in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast
Vadym Trachuk (b. 10.02.1984)
Oleh Morochkovsky (27.08.1992)
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant guard savagely tortured to blame Ukraine for Russia’s war crimes
Serhiy Potynh (b. 18.04.1992)
Nalalia Shulha (31.08.1968)
Tetiana Klochko
Russia sentences Ukrainian to 12 years on fake Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant ‘terrorism’ charges
Serhiy Spartesny (19.09.1961)
Oleksiy Brazhnyk
Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant engineer held and tortured by Russian invaders for over a year)
Andriy Nudha was seized by the Russians on 15 April 2023, and sentenced to 12 years later on ‘terrorism’ charges, seemingly linked with Russia’s persecution of Vadym Trachuk.
Oleksandr Matiukhin (7.08.1980) another ZNPP employee, was abducted on 14 March 2023 and sentenced, in September 2024 to 13 years on supposed ‘spying’ charges.
