The Soviet planners who founded Enerhodar in 1970 bestowed the city with a fitting name: “the gift of energy.” For decades, the southern Ukrainian city was an affluent company town for power plant workers and their young families, with tree-lined avenues and tall apartment blocks.

But as the Russian occupation enters its fourth year, the hub that provided electricity across Ukraine is a ghost town ruled by violence and fear. Russian troops conduct surprise home searches and seemingly arbitrary detentions, while some residents disappear into indefinite incarceration in distant penal colonies.

The majority of its original inhabitants have fled and their homes are being repossessed. Russians are settling in, Reuters found.

Ukrainian children are indoctrinated to be loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian state energy giant Rosatom.

Money from Moscow and Rosatom is pouring in. The energy company and Russian law enforcement control nearly every facet of life. Soldiers are ensconced in the nuclear power plant in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Across the city, the changes are evident. Schools and cultural centers have reopened after modest renovations paid for by Rosatom, supermarkets with Russian names sell Russian produce, and locals see unfamiliar Russian faces walking otherwise empty streets.

Reuters interviews with more than 50 people, including current and former residents and officials, as well as dozens of pages of documents published by the occupation authorities and Rosatom, reveal how Enerhodar is becoming a thoroughly Russian atomic city. It is an essential element in the broader plan to Russify Ukraine and replace a potentially disloyal population with one that identifies only with Moscow.

“Russians, they force people to love them,” said Oleg Dudar, a manager at the nuclear plant until he fled in August 2022. “That is, they say: Either I will shoot you, or break your arm, leg or do something else if you don't love me.”

The Kremlin didn’t respond to requests for comment from Reuters. The Enerhodar occupation administration and Rosatom said they are focused on building a brighter future for the city and denied that residents have been violently subjugated.

“The goal is to ensure high quality of life to attract and retain specialists,” the administration said.

Ukraine’s government and Energoatom, its nuclear energy company, did not respond to requests for comment about the allegations of Russian abuse, but have in the past accused Russia of coercing and torturing plant staff.

Energoatom was created in 1996 and remains the plant’s legal operator but has not controlled operations since Enerhodar fell to Russian forces within weeks of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Russian takeover of the nuclear plant drew international attention as the world feared another disaster like Chornobyl.

Putin’s forces have since seized nearly all of the Zaporizhzhia region, which he claims is an integral part of Russia. In a signal of the importance of Enerhodar’s nuclear plant to the Russian occupation, his top envoys rejected a suggestion made earlier this year by President Donald Trump that the plant could be managed by the United States. The American delegation didn’t raise the issue publicly when the two leaders met this month in Alaska.

All six reactors at the plant, which is Europe’s largest, have been in a cold shutdown since 2024.

While the majority of residents have left Enerhodar, some nuclear plant workers have been prevented from doing so, former inhabitants told Reuters.

Darya Dolzikova, , said she believed Russia placed such importance on capturing the town because they and their families made up so much of the population.

“Each nuclear power plant is different, so Russia will have been extremely reliant on the Ukrainian workers living in Enerhodar to run the plant,” she said.

Nowhere is Russian control more evident than in Enerhodar’s children. Across Ukraine’s occupied territories, Russia has imposed a curriculum centered on patriotism and loyalty.

For Volodymyr Sukhanov, a soft-spoken chess tutor who taught in Enerhodar for 30 years, the curriculum recalls his Soviet childhood. Sukhanov moved to Enerhodar decades ago, as hundreds relocated to the new city in search of work and a family-friendly lifestyle. Unlike his peers, Sukhanov was escaping repression.

Back then, Sukhanov taught chess in summer camps near Moscow. He was in his early 30s and the Soviet Union was in its waning days. Idealistic, Sukhanov joined former pupils at pro-democracy demonstrations.

In 1991, at a protest against a coup attempt in Moscow by communist hardliners, soldiers gunned down a favorite student named Ilya Krichevsky.

The young officer in charge was detained but the case against him was dropped, Russian media have reported. Sukhanov never forgot the officer’s name: Sergei Surovikin.

Devastated, Sukhanov decided to start afresh in Enerhodar. He settled into a small apartment and resumed teaching chess.

Decades passed. In 2022, Surovikin, then commanding Russia’s invading military, again upended Sukhanov’s life.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Sukhanov, now 67. He fled in August 2022, carrying a bag of clothes and a foldable plastic chess set.

Sukhanov now rents a high-rise flat in the nearby regional capital of Zaporizhzhia, which remains under Ukrainian control.

Departures like his have left Enerhodar a shadow of itself. The city’s pre-war population was 50,000. Now, it is home to 22,000, according to the occupation administration.

Another Enerhodar resident still in the city said though some were initially dissatisfied with their quality of life after Russian forces took over in 2022, civilians receive humanitarian aid and pensions. The only disturbance now, he said, was Ukrainian shelling. The man declined to be named.

Reuters journalists did not visit Enerhodar or the nuclear plant

and could not independently confirm the accounts of residents or their descriptions of how the city has changed.

A Ukrainian education ministry representative for Enerhodar said 80% of teachers have left since 2022. Two out of the three functioning schools need teachers, according to job postings seen by Reuters.

Earlier this year, the local administration posted a decree listing 100 measures and events to “counteract the ideology of terrorism,” with some activities taking place at schools. A primary goal, according to the final point, was to instill traditional Russian values in young people.

Enerhodar schools mark Russian holidays and notable dates, including March 18, the day of the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. According to online posts by schools and the city’s administration, schoolchildren have joined state organizations such as the Youth Army, the Movement of Youth, and the Young Guard and participated in military competitions.

Rosatom, which operates the Zaporizhzhia plant, also plays a direct role in education.

Speaking to Russian lawmakers in May, Rosatom chief Alexei Likhachev outlined educational opportunities in Enerhodar. He highlighted the opening there of a branch of the Sevastopol State University, a polytechnic college.

In 2023, Rosenergoatom, a Rosatom subsidiary, began organizing summer prep for Enerhodar high schoolers. According to its presentation, the company offered tuition, housing, and transport for 11th graders to prepare for admission to three universities specialized in the nuclear industry. In May, Enerhodar schools scheduled an “Atomic Lesson” that covered technologies and career opportunities at Rosatom, according to the plant’s Telegram channel.

“In Enerhodar, over the past three years, our primary focus has been on raising the city’s quality of life to Russian standards,” Rosatom said in its statement to Reuters.

Russian authorities have made clear their need for staff. Rosatom told Reuters that the plant has 5,000 workers and anticipated no issues increasing the workforce to 7,000 when the plant is fully functional. Before 2022, roughly 11,000 people worked there.

Some Ukrainian students and parents interviewed by Reuters said they have tried

home schooling, but with unreliable internet and a crackdown on online Ukrainian classes, the Russian curriculum is nearly impossible to escape.

Mark Komarov, a 15-year old boy from Enerhodar, said the pressure was intense.

In three years under Russian occupation, he and his guardians told Reuters that officers from Russia’s intelligence service, known as the Federal Security Service or FSB, as well as Russian soldiers visited him and his grandmother three times. Why wasn’t he enrolled in a local school, they demanded to know.

On their last visit, officers threatened to send the boy, whose parents lost custody due to substance abuse issues, to an orphanage. Save Ukraine, an organization that coordinates the rescue of Ukrainian children from occupied territory, got Komarov out earlier this year. His grandmother remained behind.

Save Ukraine said a total of 809 children have been rescued across Ukraine as of late August but noted that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so.

“Russian authorities actively create obstacles,” the organization told Reuters.

The Kremlin, FSB and Russian military didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In February 2024, Rosenergoatom director Alexander Shutikov said Rosatom had already invested about 3 billion rubles ($38.6 million) into Enerhodar for repairs and equipment for schools, kindergartens and a swimming pool.

In the city of Zaporizhzhia, Sukhanov, the chess tutor, keeps busy. During the day, he gives lessons to children who fled Enerhodar. In the evenings, he logs onto Chess.com to teach. In between, it’s odd jobs.

“I’m one of these people who likes to work, it’s important for me to keep moving,” he says.

For the past year, Sukhanov has been having heart problems, which started when a parked tram near his apartment was hit by a Russian missile. He can’t be sure of the link, knowing only that he’s now easily winded after years as a diligent runner. His white t-shirt, emblazoned with a blue and yellow heart for Ukraine, hangs loose on his thin body.

Sometimes, Sukhanov checks on former pupils who are still in Enerhodar. He’s noticed that even the most sensitive among them have changed their online profile photos to ominous avatars like skulls.

“I can imagine the kind of pressure these children are under right now, from local Russian media, school teachers and their parents,” he says.

Asked why Russian authorities prioritize children’s education, he said the reasons are the same as when he was a student and later a young teacher in the Soviet Union.

“Because it makes people easier to control.”

Nataliia and Yevhen were Russian newlyweds in 1978 when they were offered jobs at a music school in Enerhodar.

Nataliia, 69, and Yevhen, 70, were also formally employed at the nuclear plant as musicians, performing for visiting dignitaries and executives.

It was like a city within a city. Nearly everyone in Enerhodar had a relative who worked there or at the thermal power plant.

Their son, who was born in Soviet-era Enerhodar and later moved to Kyiv, would gently mock his hometown as a kind of “Soviet resort,” an old-fashioned utopia envisioned by communist architects.

Russian forces occupied the nuclear plant in March 2022. The couple watched from their window as Russian soldiers, fearing attacks from Ukrainian troops and partisans hiding in the woods, torched the pine and alder trees planted along the banks of the Dnipro.

“From then on, there was no music, no children, no classes,” Nataliia said, pacing in their rented apartment in Kyiv. The couple declined to give their last name, fearing for their safety even after leaving the occupied territory in January.

The couple’s priority was the instruments. For months, teachers took turns guarding the school. In August 2022, Russian soldiers confiscated their keys and seized the building.

The couple withdrew to their apartment and focused on maintaining the homes of neighbors who had left.

Civilians saw Russian forces install security cameras around the city, according to three former residents, and rumors spread that the phones were tapped. Many people now speak only in whispers in public and believe their phones are under constant surveillance, fueling a sense of paranoia, said Denys Soldatov, a Ukrainian man from Enerhodar who is still in contact with people there.

Public gatherings were banned. Occupation authorities insisted on Russian identity documents. Though born in Soviet Russia, Yevhen and Nataliia resisted getting a Russian passport until

life was nearly impossible without one. They were among the last to get them in December 2023, they said.

Meanwhile, Yevhen and Nataliia heard about colleagues and acquaintances getting beaten or taken to “the basement,” a cell in the police station run by officers who cooperate with Russian authorities. The couple, along with other Ukrainians who fled, said civilians were held in the cell and interrogated there by police and intelligence officers.

“We rarely went outside,” Nataliia said. “It was just too dangerous.”

Dudar, the manager who once oversaw 680 employees, said workers at the plant, which is colloquially known as “the station,” were targeted by police early in the occupation.

Workers who openly resisted the occupation were treated harshly by Russian authorities, he said.

“Many went through this, specifically station employees and workers from my department, to the point where they were released with broken ribs, limbs, cut tendons on arms and legs,” he said.

Later, others from the city said, that treatment was extended to employees who refused to sign contracts with Rosatom and people who were deemed hostile to the occupation authorities.

Then there were those who simply disappeared. 

One, a worker named Oleksiy Brazhnyk, was detained in September 2022 and last seen in a February 2023 video, when Russian forces claimed he was deported to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

His wife Svitlana never heard of any charges against him but has held out hope since then. Last year, after no word for months, she learned from freed Ukrainian prisoners that her husband may be jailed in Taganrog in Russia’s Rostov region, more than 650 kilometers away from Enerhodar.

A Reuters attempt to contact him in Taganrog was unsuccessful.

Reuters spoke to relatives of four missing or detained plant workers who spoke of torture, interrogations, and extended detention they endured.

Two, including Brazhnyk, were missing and two were sentenced to years in Russian penal colonies. Reuters also spoke to five residents who say they were detained and tortured. As of early June, the office of Enerhodar’s exiled mayor said Russian authorities still have 24 civilians in illegal detention, including 13 employees of the nuclear plant.

Enerhodar’s occupation administration and Rosatom both denied any torture or coercion of residents or plant employees.

“Insinuations like these are part of a deliberate smear campaign aimed at discrediting Russia,” Rosatom said in response to questions from Reuters.

Around 3,000 Ukrainian workers have signed contracts with Rosatom, according to comments by Energoatom, the Ukrainian plant operator. Some who refused, mostly engineers, were visited at home by Rosatom officials, flanked by FSB officers. They threatened violence against relatives to pressure them, according to five nuclear plant workers who said they knew of such cases.

Reuters could not independently confirm their accounts.

Rosatom has said it plans to restart the plant when fighting ends.

Ukraine has opened a criminal case against Shutikov, the Rosenergoatom director, accusing him of illegally establishing Russian management of the plant, forcing Ukrainian employees to work there, and planning to disconnect it from Ukraine’s energy grid.

Rosatom, the parent company, emphasized that it was Russian management that was raising standards in Zaporizhzhia, denied coercing employees, and said potential consumers include other regions of Russia.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which rotates experts into the plant, said it could not independently confirm claims of coercion.

“While it must be acknowledged that the situation is extremely difficult for all involved, the IAEA’s team reports that interactions with the site and its staff remain professional,” the Vienna-based agency told Reuters.

An investigator from the Security Service of Ukraine in Zaporizhzhia described occupied Enerhodar’s law enforcement as a sort of hydra, made up of FSB, local police and soldiers from the Akhmat unit of the Russian National Guard. Rosatom also helped control the city, nine former residents said.

Enerhodar’s occupation administration told Reuters that the concentration of security forces is needed to prevent Ukrainian attacks and sabotage.

“It is precisely in response to these threats and for guaranteed protection of the facility and personnel that Zaporizhzhia NPP and Energodar city security was additionally strengthened, and work to prevent sabotage was intensified,” the statement said.

The city’s name is said with a hard G by Russians and a soft H in Ukraine, a distinction that has become more pronounced as the war grinds on.

In videos and photos posted on June 11 on the pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel Actual_Energodar, which monitors the Russian military in the city, a group of soldiers

, including men of the Chechen Akhmat unit, can be seen barbequing and dancing 200 meters away from a reactor. The unit didn’t respond to requests for comment.

On June 19, the Permanent Mission of Ukraine in Vienna posted a video of a Russian soldier firing out of a window from one of the plant buildings. Reuters verified both videos, including their location and the presence of Russian soldiers.

Gregory Jaczko, who chaired the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission until 2012, stressed that nuclear plants require trained and responsible workers.

“This is just not appropriate,” he said, referring to the soldiers’ actions. He said any plans or discussions to restart the plant were “absurd,” given the low staffing, frontline location and military occupation.

Dolzikova, from RUSI, noted that even if direct damage to reactors was unlikely from firearms, other critical infrastructure could sustain damage.

The IAEA said its team has reported repeated gunfire near the site.

“Our position remains unchanged: military activity at or near a major nuclear power plant is clearly unacceptable,” the IAEA told Reuters.

During the three years Nataliia and Yevhen spent in occupied Enerhodar, they say policemen and FSB officers visited them repeatedly. They forced the couple to open their neighbors’ homes, asking where they had gone and who had worked for the plant.

Nataliia and Yevhen fled in January. It was lucky they were only musicians, they said.

Their driver told them checkpoint soldiers were turning back the plant workers.

Left behind was their pianoforte and their library of 3,000 books, many of them on Ukrainian history and culture.

The couple’s music school has been closed for two years for renovations sponsored by Rosatom, according to company statements. The school is seeking teachers for a variety of instruments like piano and guitar.

After five days of travel, Nataliia and Yevhen reached Belarus. Once they crossed the border and re-entered Ukraine, they ripped up their Russian passports.

At age 49, Volodymyr can still remember how the city celebrated the opening of the first reactor in the mid-1980s, when he was a young boy, with children waving tiny flags and colorful balloons.

His family were from the outlying village of Novovodiane, where his grandfather bought land after he returned from fighting for the Soviet army in the Second World War. The entire community helped lay the house’s foundation, said Volodymyr, who inherited the land. They planted fruit trees, and chicken and geese roamed the property.

By 2022, Volodymyr was working in Enerhodar’s water department and renovating the family home with plans to pass it to his son one day.

Instead, a few months after Russia’s invasion, Volodymyr evacuated to Zaporizhzhia with his son, then 9 years old. He enlisted the following year, hoping to play some small part in freeing his village.

Like many, he thought Russian forces would quickly be pushed back, so he sent his son back to the occupied city with his ex-wife.

Volodymyr sat in front line trenches in the east, where his unit came under constant attack. In September 2024, a mortar shell exploded next to him. He lost sight in his right eye.

Now discharged, he lives alone in a relative’s house outside the city of Zaporizhzhia, no closer to returning home.

“I’m just a guest here,” he said as he smoked outside.

Russian soldiers have taken over many houses in his occupied village. He said his remains empty only because it was under renovation when full-scale war began.

In Enerhodar, Russian soldiers first seized homes belonging to Ukrainian servicemen or pro-Ukrainian officials, 15 residents said. Starting around 2023, the new authorities started posting notices asking

residents to register ownership – a process that requires a Russian passport and reams of paperwork. Failing that, the city would begin repossession proceedings, residents said.

In May 2024, the Russia-installed Zaporizhzhia legislature adopted a law to determine how to use “ownerless” property during ongoing court proceedings. The occupation’s acting minister of property and land relations has said 35% of regional property is ownerless.

A Reuters review of Enerhodar’s city website found 67 apartments listed as repossessed.

Six residents who evacuated in 2024 and 2025 said Russian families appear to be moving to the city, where they shop and their children play outside. Some businesses have changed hands, they said. Others, like Ukrainian grocery stores, have new names and Russian products. A Crimean now runs the pharmacy, according to a Russian company register from this year.

A Telegram group called “Real estate Enerhodar” has dozens of messages from locals looking to rent out their homes. Among those seeking apartments, Reuters identified residents from the Russian regions of Yaroslavl, Volgodonsk, Krasnodar and Irkutsk.

The occupation administration Mayor Maxim Pukhov denied trying to replace Enerhodar’s population, telling Reuters that “a significant portion” of recent arrivals are returnees.

“Today the share of people coming from other regions of Russia is small,” Pukhov said in a statement to Reuters.

One of the newcomers from Russia is Evgeny, an energy specialist from the south of the country.

He arrived in June after his company signed a three-year contract with the thermal power plant. Military police patrol with machine guns, but don’t bother anyone, he said in a phone interview.

During the day the city continues as normal, but turns into a ghost town at night, Evgeny said. “It’s clear a lot of residents, so to speak, have left the city. The city is empty.”

Russian nuclear specialists are also arriving for months-long shifts, according to former workers and official Rosatom statements. One worker said he transferred from a nuclear facility in Russia’s northwestern Murmansk region. A Rosatom subcontractor recently opened an Enerhodar branch, employing 741 people including cleaners, drivers and radiation safety engineers, according to a tender filing from August 5.

For Volodymyr, the injured soldier, the idea of Russians moving to Enerhodar is unbearable. He’s exhausted by constant bombardment and disheartened by promises of foreign leaders to stand with Ukraine.

His son, now 12, and ex-wife remain in Enerhodar. The boy follows the Russian curriculum in school. Volodymyr asked Reuters to withhold his last name for his son’s safety.

For now, the boy has not voiced opposition to Ukraine, but Volodymyr fears that won’t last.

“He asks me constantly, ‘when are you going to be back?’” Volodymyr says, wiping away a tear.

He’ll be home soon, Volodymyr promises. And when he’s home, he tells him, they will go fishing together on the Dnipro, just as they used to.