“Monkeys with a grenade”: inside the nuclear-power station on Ukraine’s front line

By Wendell Steavenson

Boris loved his job working with technicians at the nuclear-power station in Zaporizhia. Born in 1968 in Poltava, a city in central Ukraine, he studied nuclear engineering at the university of Kharkiv before moving to Enerhodar, a city in the south of the country, built to house workers at the Zaporizhia power station. He joined the plant at an exciting time. “The field of nuclear energy stood for progress,” he said. “Something new.”

Before long he fell in love with a colleague named Ludmilla. The couple married and had two daughters. “I was happy…I studied new equipment, kept up-to-date with the developments of my profession. I was promoted up the career ladder. I had my beloved family, my work, my dacha. And then the war started.”