The Fall of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
March 4th 2022
On this day in 2022 – The issue was still in doubt for Kyiv and Ukraine. The nation was in the middle of a desperate battle. Atrocities were being committed in places like Bucha, where 458 innocent civilians were massacred by the 234th Air Assault Regiment of Russia. The Putin regime, of course, denies these allegations, but if you are reading this blog and find Putin trustworthy, despite all the photo evidence available, stick around for a few weeks.
In this entry of Glory to the Hero’s the blog, we are going to focus much further south than the towns surrounding Kyiv. We are going to dive into the terrifying moments when the Russians seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The goal is to try to imagine being an ordinary civilian worker at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe when the shelling starts. The plan for this blog is to sometimes write fictional recreations of the small events of the individual heroes. But for now I want to share an actual interview.
When the plant was seized, it was an international incident. The Russians had their side of the story, and the Ukrainians have theirs. If you know what I do for a living, I can tell you I know the Ukrainians tell the truth on this situation, and the Russians do not. I am not a primary source, but I am adjacent to them. I wish I could prove it to you, but as the line from Top Gun goes . . . then I would have to kill you. (Or go to jail).
And yet, we have here an interview with a primary source. I would think Roman German in this interview would be easier to trust for some of you than some guy pretentiously proclaiming e knows things he can’t tell you. This Nuclear Engineer is a hero, who loved his job, but suddenly on 4 March 2022 he was forced to do it at gunpoint. It got worse from there. What strikes me is that this person stayed. He tried to tough it out. He tried to live under occupation. He loved his land and his job that much, but soon he had to think of his family and his very life. His escape could have gone badly. And I salute this hero.
I want you, my reader, to imagine working at a job you love, and suddenly you are forced at gunpoint to keep doing it, without pay . . . and to suffer torture if they don’t think you are doing it correctly. A true devastating loss of freedom isn’t about being forced to wear a mask, a seatbelt, or a helmet. It isn’t even really about the government trying to scare businesses into requiring vaccinations of their workers (an unconstitutional act which was overturned.) And it isn’t really about someone getting fired for refusing to not talk about something on social media. Its about this exact situation.
Think about this next time you see tyranny – yes, even in Trump. But also think about where Trump has placed his allegiances.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/04/1180030838/ukraine-s-nuclear-workers
