MELITOPOL, September 12. /TASS/. The Kiev regime began targeting Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) workers after failing to force them to leave the plant and the city, ZNPP’s Director Yury Chernichuk said in an interview with TASS.

Earlier, Russian Permanent Representative to international organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said that the situation around the ZNPP and the nearby city of Energodar had reached a critical point, with Kiev targeting plant employees and their families.

"It is difficult to disagree with our permanent representative in Vienna. For more than six months, we have been saying that Kiev is using its actions to put psychological pressure on the ZNPP staff and city residents. The goal is to create an uncomfortable environment and conditions that make normal life for the staff unbearable, with all the resulting consequences. I don’t know what Kiev’s plans were. Perhaps it hoped that all the staff it needed would leave their jobs and the city within a week, a month, or two months," Chernichuk said.

On September 11, Alexey Likhachev, CEO of Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, said that Russia would raise the issue of the increasing number of attacks on Energodar and Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant employees. He added the issue would be raised at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which will begin on September 14.