Daughter of Chernobyl hostage says captors ‘have no clue’ about nuclear safety’

The daughter of Chernobyl power plant hostage has warned the site is being held by Russian forces who ‘have no clue about nuclear security protocols’.

Natalia Ruemmele has warned that staffers who were supposed to work a 12 hour shift have been maintaining the facility at gunpoint for more than two weeks since it was seized by Putin’s troops.

The site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster was an early strategic target for Moscow and fell on February 24 with 200 employees held hostage and working under extreme conditions.

Among them is Natalie’s 63-year-old father, who has health issues and can’t access his medication.

She told Fox News: ‘There are no living conditions at the power plant. There is no heating, there are no sleeping arrangements and food is getting scarce.

‘They get a small portion of porridge once a day. If they’re lucky, they get some bread as well. Basically, people are hungry.’

Natalie called for a safe corridor to be created to allow for a change over of staff.

She said: ‘My father has health issues, he has high blood pressure and there is no medication there.

‘There is a shift that is willing to take over, but they are stuck in Slavutich. No one could guarantee a cease-fire for them to access the plant.’

Although no longer a working power station, Chernobyl was never fully abandoned, and still requires constant management.

The facility is running on backup generators after Russian shelling cut it off from the power grid, sparking fears of a radiation leak.

‘Basically, the power plant is held by people who have no clue about the nuclear security protocols,’ Natalie said.

The generators only ‘have a 48-hour capacity’ according to transmission system operator Ukrenergo.

‘After that, cooling systems of the storage facility for spent nuclear fuel will stop, making radiation leaks imminent,’ Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba calling on the international community ‘to urgently demand Russia to cease fire and allow repair units to restore power supply’.

He added: ‘Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s barbaric war puts entire Europe in danger. He must stop it immediately.’

Despite the power loss at Chernobyl, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported it ‘sees no critical impact on safety’.

Russia said on Thursday that it had sent a team of specialists from ally Belarus to restore the line.

But Ukraine has told the United Nations nuclear watchdog that all contact with the power plant at Chernobyl has been lost.

Kyiv’s intelligence agency also claims Putin’s forces are preparing to fake a terror attack at the site to try to blackmail the world.

Ukrainian officials warned that the Russian President has ordered his troops to create a ‘man-made catastrophe’ at Chernobyl which he plans to blame on Ukrainian ‘saboteurs’ in order to justify further escalating his war.

They also claimed Russian forces have collected the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed at an aiport outside the capital to be used in the staged attack.

Without offering further proof, they claimed ‘Putin is ready to commit to the nuclear blackmail of the world community for the sake of actions to support Ukraine’.

The warning came hours after Ukraine accused Russia of an act of ‘nuclear terrorism’ for the shelling of an atomic lab in the east of the country.

Russia also drew international condemnation for shelling forces protecting Europe’s largest power plant earlier in the conflict, after fighting broke out around Zaporizhzhia, leading to dire warnings a stray rocket could trigger a meltdown.

Even China – which has refused to criticsed Russia over the invasion – issued a rare reprimand to its ally over the operation.

Moscow has claimed its war in Ukraine ‘won’t turn nuclear’ and accused the west of having a Freudian obsession with the topic.

Nato allies are yet to respond to the Chernobyl claims by the Ukrainians but it comes on the back of grim warnings the West fears Russia plans to deploy chemical weapons.

Intelligence agencies have long warned the Kremlin may order ‘false flag’ events to use as a pretext for further intervention.

In recent days the Kremlin has upped its propaganda war, pushing false claims that Ukraine is manufacturing weapons of mass destruction with the help of the US.

The White House has dismissed these claims as ‘preposterous’ and warned they could be part of narrative-building ahead of Russian deployment of chemical warfare.