On March 4, 2022, the Russian troops occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. The day before they entered its satellite town, Enerhodar, and attacked resisting civilians who barricaded the road to the nuclear power plant. Founded in the early 1970s, Enerhodar (‘the energy gift’) was meant to serve the thermal power station and the nuclear power plant. Its construction was part of the Soviet modernist project championing industrialization, urban growth and new nuclear technologies. After its occupation, Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was turned into a time bomb. The infrastructure of ‘peaceful atom’ was weaponized and used as a means of nuclear blackmail. In a grim twist, the colonial Soviet ambition to control the forces of nature culminated in Russian war atrocities and ecocide of the planetary scale.
