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Zaporizhzhia abductions and Bakhmut shelling, December 2022
Summary
A retrospective on 9 December 2022, when reports of staff seized at a nuclear plant and a battered front-line city framed the war's security picture.
What did the war look like on 9 December 2022? It was a day of pressure on people as much as on territory: at a nuclear plant, in a front-line city and in a Moscow courtroom.
Ukraine's Energoatom said Russian soldiers had abducted two senior staff members from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. According to Energoatom, the two workers were beaten before being driven off in an unknown direction. The claim added to the continuing crisis at the plant.
On the front line, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of destroying Bakhmut after weeks of relentless shelling by Russian forces. The accusation fitted a pattern of strikes on Donetsk region towns in the preceding days. On 8 December 2022, Russian shelling along the front line in the region killed one civilian and damaged buildings in Toretsk. On 7 December 2022, shelling of Kurakhove in Donetsk Oblast killed ten civilians and injured five others.
Dissent inside Russia
The same day, a court in Moscow sentenced prominent opposition figure Ilya Yashin to eight and a half years in prison. The charges were related to his criticism of the war in Ukraine.
What the day showed
Taken together, the reports of 9 December 2022 describe pressure on several fronts at once: on civilians in Donetsk region, on the staff of a nuclear facility, and on critics of the war in Russia itself. The Zaporizhzhia allegation concerned people responsible for running the plant, while the Bakhmut and Donetsk reports described continued shelling of populated areas. The Yashin sentence showed that open criticism of the war could bring a long prison term.
