Andriy Goncharuk, a diver of the ZNPP hydroshop, died after being tortured by the Russian military, “forcing him to come up with a justification for the need to drain the cooling pools,” Energoatom of Ukraine reports .

“On June 29, in a state of coma with numerous bodily injuries, Andrei Goncharuk was taken to a hospital in the city of Energodar. But the injuries turned out to be incompatible with life, and today he died without regaining consciousness,” Energoatom said in a statement.

According to the mayor of Energodar, Dmitry Orlov, in Telegram , the man was required to dive into the spray pool of the ZNPP, after refusing he was beaten and fell into a coma. The splash pool is an open reservoir required for cooling the recirculating water.

Earlier, Energoatom stated that the Russian military was forcing ZNPP employees to drain the cooling pools. According to the agency, a provocation was being prepared: the Russians intend to accuse Ukrainian nuclear scientists of storing weapons on the territory of the station. To do this, they detained several workers and tortured them to confess that they allegedly dropped some kind of weapon into the concrete bowls of the cooling pools at the ZNPP in March: explosives or shells.

Under this pretext, the military forces of the Russian Federation insist on draining the cooling pools and checking its bowls, as well as stopping the pumps supplying water to the security systems of power units, Energoatom said in a statement. This could leave the blocks of Europe's largest nuclear power plant without cooling and could threaten nuclear safety. “Further on, the invaders can throw anything they want into concrete bowls: explosives, unexploded shells, other weapons,” Energoatom said in a statement. With this, Russia could explain to the IAEA the need to transfer the ZNPP under the control of Rosatom.