War’s final act: Zelensky’s dangerous play to crash Russia-US talks

As Ukraine’s defeat becomes undeniable, Zelensky resorts to desperate provocations – risking wider conflict to block peace talks between Russia and the US

By Nadezhda Romanenko, political analyst, 12 Aug 25, https://www.rt.com/russia/622816-enemy-of-peace-zelensky-seems/

The war in Ukraine is no longer balanced on a knife’s edge, as some might have thought during the Kursk invasion. The outcome is now visible to anyone willing to look past the headlines: Kiev’s forces are depleted, morale is collapsing, and the long-promised ‘turning points’ have come and gone without materializing. Even Western officials, once confident in endless military aid, are now speaking in guarded tones about “realistic expectations.” On the battlefield, the momentum has shifted irreversibly.

Against this backdrop, the recent statement from Russia’s Ministry of Defense should not be dismissed as mere rhetoric. Moscow alleges that Ukrainian forces are preparing a major provocation – an attack designed to sabotage the upcoming Russia-US peace talks. For those who understand the stakes, the logic is disturbingly clear.

Donald Trump, now poised to play a decisive role in shaping Washington’s foreign policy, has shown a pragmatic grasp of reality. Unlike his predecessors, he is not bound by the fantasy that Ukraine can ‘win’ if only more money and weapons are sent. He has signaled that ending this conflict is both possible and necessary. This puts him on a collision course with those who see peace not as a goal, but as a threat to their own survival.

For Zelensky, peace is political extinction. Any agreement that cements territorial realities will shatter the narrative that has sustained his rule. It will mark the end of his leverage in the West, the erosion of his political base at home, and likely the swift rise of challengers eager to blame him for Ukraine’s fate. Under such pressure, the temptation to derail talks by any means available – including acts of sabotage – becomes more than plausible.

This is not conjecture; it is the historical pattern of leaders who find themselves cornered. In modern conflicts across the globe, we’ve seen desperate governments resort to reckless measures when facing the collapse of their strategic position. The danger here is that such a provocation, if timed to coincide with peace negotiations, could provoke outrage in Washington, disrupt fragile diplomatic channels, and push the conflict back toward open escalation.

Trump has already done much to shift the debate away from the entrenched ‘forever war’ mindset. He has taken political risks to challenge the military-industrial inertia that thrives on endless conflict. But now, perhaps more than ever, he will need to remain steady. The coming weeks will test his ability to see through manipulations and to resist being drawn into the agendas of those who profit from instability.

Peace is within reach – but it will not survive if the world falls for one last, desperate trick from a regime with nothing left to lose.

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Serious nuclear incident’ took place at Scottish Navy base

14 Aug 25, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/14/serious-nuclear-incident-clyde-faslane-navy-base/

MoD admits ‘Category A’ event at HMNB Clyde which will raise concerns about maintenance of Trident nuclear submarines

‘Potentially serious’ event at HMNB Clyde prompts concerns about maintenance of Trident submarines

Category A events are defined as those which carry “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment”.

The revelation will raise serious concerns about how the Trident nuclear submarines in Scotland are being maintained. It is also likely to prompt questions over transparency and why the incident was not known about until now.

HMNB Clyde houses every Royal Navy submarine, including the Vanguard-class vessels which are armed with Trident missiles.

On Wednesday afternoon, the SNP demanded an urgent explanation from the Labour Government in Westminster over a “catalogue of failures” including separate contamination nearby.

The MoD declined to offer specific details of the incident, which was first reported by the Helensburgh Advertiser. This means it was unclear if any radiation was leaked into the environment or if there was a risk of this taking place.

The incident is not the first category A incident to take place at Faslane, with the MoD having reported two such cases from 2006 to 2007 and a third that took place in 2023.

The incident was disclosed in a written parliamentary answer by Maria Eagle, the procurement minister, after she was asked to provide the number of Nuclear Site Event Reports (NSERs) at the Coulport and Faslane naval bases.

She said there had been one category A event at Faslane between Jan 1 and April 22, two category B, seven category C and four category D. A further five events were deemed to be “below scale”, meaning they were less serious.

Nearby Coulport, where the UK’s nuclear missiles and warheads are stored, had four category C and nine category D events over the same period.

Ms Eagle told Dave Doogan, the SNP MP who tabled the question: “I cannot provide specific detail for the events as disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of any relevant forces.

“I can assure the honourable member that none of the events listed in question 49938 caused harm to the health of any member of staff or to any member of the public and none have resulted in any radiological impact to the environment.”

She also said that NSERs “are raised to foster a robust safety culture that learns from experience, whether that is equipment failures, human error, procedural failings, documentation shortcoming or near-misses”.

Category B incidents are defined as having “actual or high potential for a contained release within [a] building or submarine or unplanned exposure to radiation”.

Category C incidents have “moderate potential for future release”, while category D incidents are unlikely to prompt any release but “may contribute towards an adverse trend”.

Radioactive water leak

It emerged last week that radioactive water from the Coulport and Faslane bases, which are situated near Glasgow, was allowed to leak into the sea after several old pipes burst.

The substance was released into Loch Long because the Royal Navy inadequately maintained a network of around 1,500 pipes on the base, a regulator found.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the pollution watchdog north of the border, found up to half the components at the base were beyond their design life.

David Cullen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Basic defence think tank, said attempts to hide previous serious incidents from the public had been “outrageous”.

Mr Cullen said: “The MoD is almost 10 years into a nearly £2bn infrastructure programme at Faslane and Coulport, and yet they apparently didn’t have a proper asset management system as recently as 2022.

“This negligent approach is far too common in the nuclear weapons programme, and is a direct consequence of a lack of oversight.”

Government accused of ‘cover-up’

Keith Brown, the deputy leader of the SNP, accused the Government of a cover-up in relation to the incident at Faslane.

Mr Brown said: “Nuclear weapons are an ever-present danger and this new information is deeply worrying.

“With repeated reports of serious incidents at Faslane and now confirmed radioactive contamination in Loch Long, it’s clear these weapons are not only poorly maintained but are a direct threat to our environment, our communities, and our safety.

“Worse still, the Labour Government is refusing to provide any details about the category A incident, or the full extent of the contamination, including who could potentially be affected.”

The SNP has vowed to scrap Trident, despite consensus in Westminster and among defence experts that the world is now more dangerous than at any point since the Cold War.

The accusations over a cover-up come after The Telegraph disclosed last month that Britain had secretly offered asylum to almost 24,000 Afghan soldiers and their families.

The Government earmarked £7bn to relocate Afghans to the UK over five years after they were caught up in the most serious data breach in history.

Despite enormous costs to the taxpayer, the breach was kept secret from the public for 683 days by two successive governments after the first use of a super-injunction by ministers.

An MoD spokesman said: “We place the upmost importance on handling radioactive substances safely and securely. Nuclear Site Event Reports demonstrate our robust safety culture and commitment to learn from experience.

“The incidents posed no risk to the public and did not result in any radiological impact to the environment. It is factually incorrect to suggest otherwise. Our Government backs our nuclear deterrent as the ultimate guarantor of our national security.

The MoD said it was unable to disclose details of individual incidents for “national security reasons”. However, it is understood all the NSERs were categorised as having a “low safety significance”.

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear legacy costs far outweigh Germany’s environmental protection investments.

Clean Energy Wire, 23 Jul 2025, Benjamin Wehrmann, Germany https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/nuclear-legacy-costs-far-outweigh-germanys-environmental-protection-investments

Over half of the German environment ministry’s (BMUKN) budget for 2025 will be spent on managing the country’s nuclear waste and preparing a decision for a final nuclear repository. According to a government budget draft, the ministry led by Social Democrat (SPD) Carsten Schneider will receive 2.7 billion euros this year, about 300 million euros more than in 2024. Out of this sum, 1.4 billion euros are reserved for the “temporary and final storage of radioactive waste,” a parliament report on the draft said.

In 2024, Germany spent about 1.1 billion euros on nuclear waste management, after the country shuttered its last commercial nuclear power plants in mid-2023. Some 860 million euros from the 2025 ministry budget will be spent on the search for a final repository and about 535 million euros on temporary storage.

By contrast, about 460 million euros were marked for nature and environment protection measures by the ministry, while the subordinate Federal Environment Agency (UBA) will receive another 205 million euros. Climate action costs were not yet reflected in the budget, as the environment ministry was handed responsibility for this policy field from the economy ministry only in spring this year, the parliament report said. It did not specify which measures are covered under this field. Energy policy remains with the economy ministry.

“Nuclear waste is eating up environmental protection,” Wolfgang Ehmke from the citizen initiative for environmental protection of Lüchow-Dannenberg, told newspaper Tageszeitung (taz). The rural district in northern Germany is known for its temporary nuclear repository in the municipality of Gorleben, which has been the site of many anti-nuclear protests over the past decades. Management and construction works at the Gorleben repository alone climbed from 20 million euros in 2024 to 33 million one year later, the newspaper said.

Another repository, Asse near the town of Wolfenbüttel, would even require maintenance investments of 206 million euros this year. Costs for managing the country’s nuclear waste are even higher, as part of the legacy costs are carried by other ministries. For example, the research ministry is responsible for research reactors, while the finance ministry handles nuclear infrastructure in the former eastern German states, as agreed in the country’s reunification treaties, taz added.

Part of the costs of Germany’s nuclear waste management are financed through a fund filled by the former nuclear plant operators. These made a one-off payment of 24 billion euros in 2017 and were subsequently freed of further financial liabilities. Following Germany’s 2011 renewed commitment to phase out nuclear power, the country started looking for a location to safely store its roughly 28,100 cubic metres of radioactive material for hundreds of thousands of years. Initially, the aim was to select a location for the final repository by 2031 but, in 2022, the responsible agency pushed the deadline to until at least 2046.

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Germany, wastes | Leave a comment

Don’t believe the hype about nuclear weapons.

13 Aug 25, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/12/dont-believe-the-hype-about-nuclear-weapons

We must continue to challenge claims that nuclear weapons are a ‘necessity’, says Caroline Lucas, while Gerry Weston says they don’t protect us from Russian aggression and Michael Newman says they didn’t end the second world war.

Polly Toynbee is right to point out that while nuclear war has been pushed down the “league table of fear”, most recently by concerns about the climate crisis, the nuclear threat itself remains “as great or greater” and should be the subject of much more urgent debate (I changed my mind on banning the bomb, but the threat of nuclear war is growing – and so is complacency, 7 August). All the more surprising, then, that she overlooks some of the more promising steps towards nuclear disarmament.

In particular, momentum is building behind the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which came into force in 2021 and is now supported by nearly half the countries in the world. The treaty was the focus of much of the debate in Hiroshima, where I attended the 80th anniversary commemorations, and it deserves to be much better known.

How disappointing, then, that the UK government is not only failing to support it but is actively trying to suppress information about the impact of nuclear war as one of just three countries to vote against the creation of a UN scientific panel on its effects. Instead, it’s choosing to accept a recommendation from the recent strategic defence review to run a PR campaign to convince people of the “necessity” of a growing nuclear arsenal.

If we are to have any success in challenging this, we need to promote a public education campaign that sets out the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons, the flaws in so-called deterrence theory and measures that could immediately reduce risk – taking weapons off hair-trigger alert, for example, and joining China in a “no first use” policy.

Recent polling from More in Common suggests that young people believe nuclear conflict is the greatest threat to Britain. We owe it to them not to give up.
Caroline Lucas
Vice-president, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; former Green party MP

I normally agree with Polly Toynbee, and was also on the Aldermaston marches as a child, but she is misguided in believing that a joint European nuclear capability would make us safer from Russian aggression. If Russian tanks were to roll into Poland, does she envisage Europe threatening to take out Moscow? If so, I hope that it would be an empty threat and hence useless; if a real threat, we are on the road to Armageddon.

Maybe it would deter a nuclear attack or threat, but is such a situation conceivable? After all, Vladimir Putin could launch a nuclear attack on Ukraine, which has no nuclear umbrella. The more places that have such weapons, the more the risk of misjudged situations. In practice, the nuclear option is useless, unsafe and costly, as well as immoral.
Gerry Weston
Willesden Green, London

The dangerous myth that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima ended the Pacific war is perpetuated in all the coverage of its 80th anniversary. When I attended an intensive summer course with my students, organised by Hiroshima City University in 2005, we discussed the evidence against this contention. Subsequently, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, in his book Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, laid out the overwhelming evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the war that finally forced the surrender. Nuclear weapons kill people and may destroy the planet – they do not end war.
Michael Newman
Emeritus professor, London Metropolitan University

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

A Shield of Lies: Netanyahu’s Battle Against the World

13 August 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-shield-of-lies-netanyahus-battle-against-the-world/

It was a sign of someone desperate that his message has failed to take wing and make its way to better lands. With the strategy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Gaza Strip sundered and falling over, leaving only a thick butcher’s bill (over 60,000 deaths for starters), extraordinary suffering and humanitarian catastrophe, he thought it wise to confront foreign press outlets on a late Sunday in the hope that the tide might turn away from his exemplary viciousness. There had been, he moaned like a wounded starlet, a “global campaign of lies” about Israel’s war in Gaza. In doing so, he merely inflated the arguments against him with boisterous credit and almost irrefutable plausibility.

The conference, which gave “an opportunity to puncture the lies and tell the truth,” involved the following points: Hamas still has thousands of fighters in Gaza; it vowed to repeat what it had done on October 7, 2023; it continued to expound the goal of wishing to destroy Israel even as it subjugated Gazans, stole their precious food, and shot those seeking to move to safe zones, the latter term being itself a monstrosity in the context of this conflict. Paternally, Netanyahu as the punishing father figure, thought he had deciphered the true desire of those in Gaza, which presumably would not have entailed the killing of Palestinians by the tens of thousands and starving the rest. Everything could be blamed on a militant organisation he had done so much to praise as a countering force against Fatah in the West Bank. As things stood now, Gazans seemed to be suffering from a highly developed sense of Stockholm’s syndrome, “begging us, and they’re begging the world: ‘Free us, Free us, and free Gaza from Hamas’.”

With a solid body of mendacity to work with, Netanyahu proceeded to build an edifice of fantasy few others outside Israel could contend with: that the same Israeli forces who starve, kill and maim the civilian populace of the Strip have no wish to impose an occupation but “free it from Hamas terrorists. The war can end tomorrow if Gaza, or rather if Hamas lays down its arms and releases all the remaining hostages.” Israeli policy was not one of starving the Palestinians into famine wrecks, skeletal ruin and physiological malfunction. That hideous criminal pursuit fell to Hamas, apparently responsible for the violent looting of aid trucks and the deliberate creation of “a shortage of supply.” Fantastically, Netanyahu blamed the United Nations for refusing “to distribute the thousands of trucks that we let into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing,” a delightful complaint given his government’s overt hatred for a body he always wished to be rid of from the occupied territories. The synapses in Netanyahu-Land seemed frailer than ever, if not altogether snapped.

He then belted out the now familiar five-point vision of the Strip once Hamas is defeated. This elusive “day after” includes the following objectives: the disarming of Hamas, the freeing of all hostages, the demilitarising of the Gaza Strip, granting Israel “overriding security control”, the creation of a non-Israeli administration that will not “educate its children for terror, doesn’t pay terrorists and doesn’t launch terrorist attacks against Israel.” Unlike other proposals advanced by France, the UK and Canada, the Palestinian Authority is also excluded from the arrangements, since no Palestinian politician is worth the Israeli PM’s time. Netanyahu’s idea of a politically viable Palestinian is one manacled to the security regime of other powers.

The stage for the next slaughter is set, namely, the dismantling of “the two remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza City and the Central Camps. Contrary to false claims, this is the best way to end the war, and the best way to end it speedily.” Netanyahu feigns a humanitarian streak in stating that the civilian population will be allowed to “leave the combat areas to designated safe zones.” The process of ethnic cleansing, or simply cleansing of the population, is to simply continue.

Oblivious to Netanyahu’s fortified wall of prejudice is that much of the groundwork for precisely those outcomes he hopes to avoid have already been laid. Whether it be Hamas or any other militant organisation, the notion of pacifist subordinate figures content with their status in any territory where Israel has the last word on everything is absurdly unrealistic.

Doing everything to make his case even less convincing, Netanyahu then told Israeli journalists after seeing the foreign scribblers off that he had never halted all humanitarian aid to Gaza. Even the patriotic Times of Israel found this a bit rich, noting that “his government had enacted that policy earlier this year.” The paper went on to quote the announcement from the premier’s office on March 2: “Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease.”

Netanyahu also refused to accept the proposition that Gaza’s population was starving. Shortages in supply yes; starvation no. “If we had wanted starvation, if that had been our policy, 2 million Gazans wouldn’t be living today after 20 months.” The same could be said about the supreme crime of all: “if we wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon.” A wise head might have told him that few who commit genocide or engineer circumstances of mass murder ever make the intention that obvious.

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Switzerland moves to lift ban on new nuclear power plants

Critics counter that new reactors carry high costs, waste disposal challenges and potential public pushback.

The Swiss government has presented draft legislation to end its ban on
building new nuclear power plants, reversing a policy adopted in 2018 to
phase out the technology. The plan, a counterproposal to the popular
initiative “Stop the Blackout,” would allow companies to apply for
licenses to construct reactors — if approved by Parliament and upheld in
a potential referendum.

The popular initiative, meanwhile, wants the shift
to be constitutionally enshrined, which would be more difficult to achieve
than a legislative change. Lifting the ban would mark a major shift in
Switzerland’s energy policy. Proponents argue nuclear will be needed
alongside renewables to meet rising electricity demand, cut emissions and
stabilize the grid. Critics counter that new reactors carry high costs,
waste disposal challenges and potential public pushback. Neighboring
Germany exited nuclear power completely in 2023.

Politico 15th Aug 2025, https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/08/15/switzerland-moves-to-lift-ban-on-new-nuclear-power-plants-00509734

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Switzerland | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce making fortune from ‘untested new nuclear market’.

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament condemns the firm’s plans for AI-assisted small modular reactors

14 August 2025, Morning Star

ROLLS-ROYCE has been accused of making a fortune out of a “toxic, untested new nuclear market” over plans to power artificial intelligence (AI) with small modular reactors (SMRs).

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) made the comments after the engineering firm’s chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic claimed that its plans to power energy-intensive AI with its nuclear reactors could make it Britain’s most valuable company.

“There is no private company in the world with the nuclear capability we have. If we are not market leader globally, we did something wrong,” he told the BBC.

SMRs are smaller and quicker to build than traditional nuclear plants, but the technology remains unproven.

Rolls-Royce has already supplied SMRs to power dozens of nuclear submarines and has signed a deal to develop six for the Czech Republic while developing three for Britain.

“SMRs are an absolute disaster,” said CND general secretary Sophie Bolt. “Should a working model actually be built, they will produce far more toxic radioactive waste than regular nuclear reactors.

“Rolls-Royce is making a fortune out of this toxic, untested new nuclear market.

“We are bombarded with plans to rapidly expand nuclear sites across the country, but there is still no plan for what to do with the toxic waste generated or deal with legacy waste.

“Britain and its workers need a new green deal, one that leaves nuclear in the 20th century, and puts genuine renewables and anti-militarism at the heart of its security strategy.

“This has been outlined in the Alternative Defence Review, a report supported by CND and the RMT union, which acts as a roadmap for this transition which puts workers at the heart of change.”…………………………………………(Subscribers only)

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Quebec engineering body finds former SNC-Lavalin CEO guilty on multiple counts of misconduct.

Aajah Sauter, August 12, 2025

Former SNC-Lavalin Group chief executive Jacques Lamarre has been found guilty of seven of 14 allegations of misconduct made against him by Quebec’s professional order for engineers.

Last fall, the disciplinary council of L’Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec began several days of hearings to decide whether Mr. Lamarre infringed the organization’s code of ethics and professional duties in the early 2000s when he was CEO of SNC-Lavalin, now known as AtkinsRéalis Group Inc.

These hearings followed an investigation by the Ordre’s Office of the Syndic, which then launched a formal complaint against the former engineering executive.

The Syndic made 14 separate allegations against Mr. Lamarre as part of its disciplinary complaint, which are related to previous legal cases involving the company. The allegations link broadly to SNC-Lavalin’s past business conduct as it sought contracts in Libya, as well as past political financing activities in Montreal.

Among the findings of guilt, L’Ordre concluded that SNC-Lavalin under Mr. Lamarre’s leadership directly or indirectly made payments amounting to about $2-million to the family of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, notably for expenses incurred by his son Saadi while he stayed in Canada.

Mr. Lamarre was found not guilty on allegations that he sanctioned the purchase of a luxury yacht for Saadi.

The former CEO last year denied the Syndic’s allegations. In a statement released Wednesday, Mr. Lamarre announced his resignation as a retired member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec. He said he’s “disappointed” with the way the disciplinary investigation was conducted and called the ruling “deeply unfair” and “unreasonable.”

“The Syndic of the Order granted complete immunity to certain witnesses with conflicts of interest, while seeking to hold me responsible for actions for which those same witnesses were found guilty in other proceedings. ”

In early 2012, Swiss and Canadian police discovered questionable payments from SNC-Lavalin that ran through bank accounts in Switzerland and other countries. These payments were later found to be bribes to procure contracts for projects in Libya during Moammar Gadhafi’s rule, as SNC-Lavalin sought a share of contracts offered by his government.

In 2015, SNC-Lavalin and two affiliates were charged with fraud and violating Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act tied to its dealings in Libya. The company requested a settlement to the case, commonly known as a deferred prosecution agreement, but was denied.

SNC-Lavalin solidified an agreement with prosecutors in 2019 for the company’s construction division to plead guilty to a single charge of fraud while the corruption charge was dropped. The company agreed to pay a $280-million fine and received a three-year probation order.

In 2016, the company acknowledged that it engaged in a scheme that involved SNC-Lavalin employees being encouraged to donate to federal political parties and then be reimbursed through fake personal-expense claims, bonuses or benefits. Canadian law states that businesses cannot make financial contributions to political parties irrespective of candidates.

The company later entered into a compliance agreement with the Commissioner of Canada Elections. SNC-Lavalin also admitted that it used a similar strategy for donations to Quebec political parties.

No penalties for Mr. Lamarre were announced by L’Ordre, though it said it will set a date for sanctions. He could be revoked of his status as a professional engineer, or face fines.

“I am proud of my career and the role I played as an executive at SNC-Lavalin,” Mr. Lamarre said in his statement. “But given the ongoing conflict with the Order and the way I have been treated, I have no choice but to resign.”

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Legal | Leave a comment

EU’s Kallas urges ‘pressure on Russia’ ahead of Putin-Trump talks

12 Aug, 2025 , https://www.rt.com/news/622780-kallas-eu-putin-trump/

The diplomat has claimed the bloc is working on “more military support for Ukraine”

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has called for more pressure on Moscow ahead of the summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump.

Foreign ministers of the bloc’s member states held an urgent video-conference on Monday, after it was announced that the Russian and US leaders will meet face-to-face in Alaska on August 15 to discuss the Ukraine conflict and other issues.

Following the discussions, Kallas issued a post on X to offer the bloc’s “support for US steps that will lead to a just peace” between Moscow and Kiev.

“Transatlantic unity, support to Ukraine and pressure on Russia is how we will end this war and prevent future Russian aggression in Europe,” she insisted.

According to the foreign policy chief, the EU is currently working on “more sanctions against Russia, more military support for Ukraine, and more support for Ukraine’s budgetary needs and accession process to join the EU.”

On Monday, Trump confirmed he will consult with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and the leaders of Kiev’s Western European backers before his summit with Putin. “I am going to get everybody’s ideas. I go into that thing fully loaded right up there – and we’re going to see what happens,” he said.

The comments by Kallas echoed a joint statement “on peace for Ukraine,” issued on Sunday by the leaders of France, Germany, the UK, Poland, Italy, and Finland, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded by describing the statement as “another Nazi-style pamphlet,” noting that the cessation of hostilities demanded by the EU and UK does not include stopping the supply of weapons to “Kiev terrorists.”

Moscow has repeatedly said it is interested in a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict, but has insisted that the root causes of the crisis must be addressed in order to bring a permanent and stable peace. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov previously said that “unlike [Western] Europe… which completely ignores the root causes of the current situation, in the US there is a desire to get to the bottom of this issue.”

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

Hellish’: heatwave brings hottest nights on record to the Middle East.

Temperatures did not drop below 36C in Sedom, Israel on Tuesday
night, while several parts of Jordan stayed above 35C on Monday.

Guardian 15th Aug 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/hellish-heatwave-brings-hottest-nights-on-record-to-the-middle-east

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, MIDDLE EAST | Leave a comment

Government faces calls to investigate Faslane nuclear leak.

Revelations of radioactive leaks from Trident’s base were branded “as
shocking as they are unsurprising” today as the government faced calls to
urgently investigate.

Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA)
documents obtained by The Ferret revealed that the watchdog was aware of
the 2019 discharge of radioactive water from the home of Britain’s
nuclear arsenal at Faslane and Coulport — just 30 miles from Glasgow,
Scotland’s most populous city — into Loch Long, citing the cause as the
Royal Navy’s failure to properly maintain a network of 1,500 pipes.

Scottish CND executive member David Kelly told the Star: “The failures in
pipework at Coulport, and the subsequent release of nucleotides into Loch
Long are as shocking as they are unsurprising. “‘How cheaply can we run
a nuclear arsenal’ seems to be the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) approach
to this most deadly of facilities. “All mechanical components, as complex
as a nuclear submarine, or as simple as a pipe, are designed for a specific
life.

Morning Star 12th Aug 2025, https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/government-faces-calls-investigate-faslane-nuclear-leak

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Legal challenge against nuclear site’s water plans

Federica Bedendo, BBC News, North East and Cumbria, 13 Aug 25,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c987e11393ko

An environmental activist is lodging a legal challenge against plans from the UK’s largest nuclear plant to remove water from its site.

Marianne Birkby, campaigner for Lakes Against Nuclear Dump (LAND), is contesting a decision by the Environment Agency (EA) to give Sellafield permission to extract water from its Cumbrian plant – a process needed to build a new storage facility for radioactive waste.

Ms Birkby fears the process would produce contaminated water, which would be discharged into the nearby Calder and Ehen rivers.

The EA said it had considered all the potential impacts on the environment before giving permission. Sellafield said the water would not be discharged in the rivers.

Ms Birkby is working with environmental lawyers Leigh Day, who have warned the EA of their intention to pursue a judicial review.

The licence to abstract water was granted to Sellafield in May.

It is part of a wider project to build the second of four new units to store waste to support the site’s decommissioning operations.

Sellafield said the water would have to be extracted when the ground was dug up to build the new facility, and the water removed would mostly be from rainfall.

“Removing water from a construction site is standard practice when preparing land for a building project,” a spokesman said.

They added: “The water is pumped to on-site storage tanks where it is tested prior to being discharged direct to sea.”

Fears for rivers

Ms Birkby said she feared the environment would “bear the brunt” of the operations, which she said could impact the endangered freshwater pearl mussel population present in the Ehen.

“No-one begrudges Sellafield repackaging leaking nuclear wastes from the Magnox silos, but this should not be at the further expense of Cumbria’s rivers and groundwaters,” she said.

She added she believed the EA should have required Sellafield to provide a hydrological impact assessment, but the EA said it did not believe that was needed.

“In this case, we did not require a hydrological risk assessment because we consider that the application will not affect any site of nature conservation, significant landscape or heritage, protected species or habitat,” a EA spokesman said.

The licence granted to Sellafield would allow the company to extract up to 350,400 cubic metres (77,077,224 gallons) of water a year until 2031.

Nuclear Free Local Authorities, which represents about 25 councils who are against civil nuclear power, has also written to the EA to raise concerns about the permit.

“We are concerned that the proposal will involve nearly one million litres of contaminated water being discharged into the River Calder and out into the sea every day for an unknown length of time,” they said.

A EA spokesman said: “When we receive water abstraction license applications we take into consideration all the potential impacts on the environment before determining whether to issue a licence.”

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal, UK | Leave a comment

In major shift, Germany ends arms exports to Israel amid Netanyahu’s Gaza takeover plan

Chancellor Friedrich Merz bans shipments of military equipment that could be used in Gaza

The Week, By Ajish P Joy August 09, 2025

Germany has announced it will halt approval of weapons exports to Israel for use in the Gaza Strip “until further notice,” marking a sharp policy shift for one of Israel’s staunchest allies. Chancellor Friedrich Merz made the declaration yesterday after weeks of publicly criticising Israel’s “unclear” goals in Gaza and expressing concern over the worsening humanitarian crisis, though until now he had avoided altering policy.

The decision followed intense domestic debate over how to respond to credible reports of widespread malnutrition and even starvation in Gaza. The immediate trigger was Israel’s decision yesterday to step up military operations in the territory and take over Gaza City.

Merz said the new offensive, approved by the Israeli cabinet, made it “increasingly difficult” to see how Israel could achieve its stated aims of disarming Hamas and freeing the remaining 50 hostages. He affirmed Germany’s commitment to those objectives but stressed that a ceasefire and relief for civilians were top priorities. He also urged Israel to halt any moves towards annexing parts of the West Bank.

Under the new policy, Berlin will not approve the export of any military equipment that could be used in Gaza. Merz said the government was “deeply worried about the continued suffering of the civilian population” and that the planned offensive placed “even stronger responsibility” on Israel to ensure humanitarian provisions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.theweek.in/news/middle-east/2025/08/09/in-major-shift-germany-ends-arms-exports-to-israel-after-netanyahu-s-gaza-takeover-plan.html

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

It’s not ‘Who lost Ukraine?’ It’s ‘Who destroyed Ukraine?

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 15 Aug 25

When Mao won the Chinese civil war in 1949, adding China to the USSR in the roster of commie countries, the US war hawks of that era excoriated the Truman administration for ‘losing’ China’. Their unhinged claim was that the commie filled State Department made Mao’s inevitable takeover possible. That helped fuel Sen. Joe McCarthy’s equally unhinged campaign to smoke out all those imagined commies in the Truman administration a year later.

A whiff of that 1949 anti commie hysteria is playing out on mainstream media ahead of Friday’s sit down between President Trump and Russian President Putin seeking a ceasefire and end to this disastrous war destroying Ukraine.

Morning Joe Scarborough this morning pondered whether Trump will cave to evil Putin’s Ukraine dismembership demands to achieve the peace that might garner him a Nobel Peace Prize. Yep, Moring Joe laid out the ‘Who lost Ukraine’ meme on Trump to prepare us for the onslaught of anti-Trump, anti-Russian hysteria sure to follow if a settlement reflecting the reality of Ukraine’s dismembership is inked in Alaska tomorrow.

A settlement is only possible if a US/Russia settlement verifies the battlefield reality. Ukraine’s military is teetering on collapse with over a million dead cannon fodder and 4 oblasts gone to Russia forever. If Trump accomplishes peace…which is far from likely, the blame game will focus on Trump who ‘lost’ Ukraine which will end up as a greatly diminished rump state dependent on US/European life support for years to come.

Historians instead should begin with the 6 administrations preceding Trump’s second term 2.0: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump 1.0 and most grievously Joe Biden. H.W. Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, Trump 1.0 and Biden all promoted NATO expansion into Ukraine and dismissed all Russian security pleas that such expansion was a Red Line Russia would view as an existential threat.

While his predecessors put Ukraine on the road to destruction, Joe Biden essentially pulled the trigger on a war Ukraine had no chance of winning. Putin tried to avoid invading. He saw Ukraine massing 60,000 elite troops on the Donbas border to polish off the Ukrainian separatists there seeking independence and safety from Kyiv neo fascists. His plea of December 21 2021 was dismissed out of hand. Biden told Putin that Russia’s security interests, which included autonomy for Ukrainian separatists as well as a neutral Ukraine not in NATO, were ‘not subject to discussion whatsoever.’

Biden knew that response would provoke a Russian invasion. But Biden miscalculated that US weapons combined with draconian Russian sanctions would result in a Vietnam style defeat for Russia, possibly even the overthrow of President Putin.

So here we are three years, eight months later with Putin, not Trump holding all the cards in tomorrow’s negotiation. Trump knows the correct outcome is settling on Russia’s terms: no return of Ukraine territory, no NATO for Ukraine and a demilitarized Ukraine that can never attack inside Russia territory again. He also knows he’ll be branded by America’s ravenous war hawks as ‘The man who lost Ukraine’ should he end the war.

Nobody lost Ukraine. But we now know who destroyed Ukraine. The only question to be answered is…How severely Ukraine will be destroyed before the guns go silent.

August 16, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Setting the record straight on the background to events in Ukraine.

First, both the provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region voted for independence from Ukraine in 2014 in resistance to a U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the elected president Viktor Yanukovych in February of that year. The independence vote came just eight days after neo-Nazis burned dozens of ethnic Russians alive in Odessa. To crush their bid for independence, the new U.S.-installed Ukrainian government then launched an “anti-terrorist” war against the provinces, with the assistance of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which had taken part in the coup. It is a war that is still going on eight years later, a war that Russia has just entered.

During these eight years, the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Azov have used artillery, snipers and assassination teams to systematically butcher more than 5,000 people (another 8,000 were wounded) — mostly civilians — in the Donetsk Peoples Republic, according to the leader of the DPR, who provided these figures in a press conference recently. In the Luhansk People’s Republic, an additional 2,000 civilians were killed and 3,365 injured. The total number of people killed and wounded in Donbass since 2014 is more than 18,000.

This has received at most superficial coverage by The New York Times; it has not been covered by Western corporate media because it does not fit the official Washington narrative

By Steven Starr,

The New York Times recently published an article by David Sanger entitled “Putin spins a conspiracy theory that Ukraine is on a path to produce nuclear weapons.” Unfortunately, it is Sanger who puts so much spin in his reporting that he leaves his readers with a grossly distorted version of the what the presidents of Russia and Ukraine have said and done.

Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent statements at the Munich conference centered around the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which welcomed Ukraine’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in conjunction with Ukraine’s decision to return to Russia the nuclear weapons left on its territory by the Soviet Union.

In other words, the Budapest Memorandum was expressly about Ukraine giving up its nukes and not becoming a nuclear weapon state in the future. Zelensky’s speech at Munich made it clear that Ukraine was moving to repudiate the Budapest Memorandum; Zelensky essentially stated that Ukraine must be made a member of NATO, otherwise it would acquire nuclear weapons.

This is what Zelensky said, with emphasis added:

“I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.

Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world’s third nuclear capability [i.e. Ukraine relinquished the Soviet nuclear weapons that had been placed in Ukraine during the Cold War]. We don’t have that weapon. … Therefore, we have something. The right to demand a shift from a policy of appeasement to ensuring security and peace guarantees.

Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. . . I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt. . .

I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.”

Sanger’s Times article implies that it was a “conspiracy theory” that Zelensky was calling for Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons. Sanger was not ignorant of the meaning of the Budapest Memorandum, rather he chose to deliberately ignore it and misrepresented the facts.

President Vladimir Putin, along with the majority of Russians, could not ignore such a threat for a number of historical reasons that The New York Times and ideologues such as Sanger have also chosen to ignore. It is important to list some of those facts, since most Americans are unaware of them, as they have not been reported in the Western mainstream media. Leaving parts of the story out turns Putin into just a madman bent on conquest without any reason to intervene.

This has received at most superficial coverage by The New York Times; it has not been covered by Western corporate media because it does not fit the official Washington narrative that Ukraine is pursuing an “anti-terrorist operation” in its unrelenting attacks on the people of Donbass. For eight years the war instead has been portrayed as a Russian “invasion,” well before Russia’s current intervention.

Likewise, The New York Times, in its overall coverage, chose not to report that the Ukrainian forces had deployed half of its army, about 125,000 troops, to its border with Donbass by the beginning of 2022.

In other words, acquiring tactical nuclear weapons will be much easier for Ukraine than for some other states I am not going to mention here, which are conducting such research, especially if Kiev receives foreign technological support. We c

The importance of neo-Nazi Right Sektor politicians in the Ukraine government and neo-Nazi militias (such as the Azov Battalion) to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, also goes unreported in the mainstream corporate media. The Azov battalion flies Nazi flags; they have been trained by teams of U.S. military advisers and praised on Facebook these days. In 2014, Azov was incorporated in the Ukrainian National Guard under the direction of the Interior Ministry.

The Nazis killed something on the order of 27 million Soviets/Russians during World War II (the U.S. lost 404,000). Russia has not forgotten and is extremely sensitive to any threats and violence coming from neo-Nazis. Americans generally do not understand what this means to Russians as the United States has never been invaded.

So, when the leader of Ukraine essentially threatens to obtain nuclear weapons, this is most certainly considered to be an existential threat to Russia. That is why Putin focused on this during his speech preceding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sanger and The New York Times must discount a Ukrainian nuclear threat; they can get away with doing so because they have systematically omitted news pertaining to this for many years.

Sanger makes a very misleading statement when he writes, “Today Ukraine does not even have the basic infrastructure to produce nuclear fuel.”

Ukraine is not interested in making nuclear fuel — which Ukraine already purchases from the U.S. Ukraine has plenty of plutonium, which is commonly used to make nuclear weapons today; eight years ago Ukraine held more than 50 tons of plutonium in its spent fuel assemblies stored at its many nuclear power plants (probably considerably more today, as the reactors have continued to run and produce spent fuel). Once plutonium is reprocessed/separated from spent nuclear fuel, it becomes weapons usable. Putin noted that Ukraine already has missiles that could carry nuclear warheads, and they certainly have scientists capable of developing reprocessing facilities and building nuclear weapons.

In his Feb. 21 televised address, Putin said Ukraine still has the infrastructure leftover from Soviet days to build a bomb. He said:

“As we know, it has already been stated today that Ukraine intends to create its own nuclear weapons, and this is not just bragging.

Ukraine has the nuclear technologies created back in the Soviet times and delivery vehicles for such weapons, including aircraft, as well as the Soviet-designed Tochka-U precision tactical missiles with a range of over 100 kilometers.

But they can do more; it is only a matter of time. They have had the groundwork for this since the Soviet era.

If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia. We cannot but react to this real danger, all the more so since let me repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons may help it acquire these weapons to create yet another threat to our country.”

NATO-US Refuse Binding Nuclear Treaties

In his Times piece, Sanger states, “American officials have said repeatedly that they have no plans to place nuclear weapons in Ukraine.”

But the U.S. and NATO have refused to sign legally binding treaties with Russia to this effect. In reality, the U.S. has been making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO, while training and supplying its military forces and conducting joint exercises on Ukrainian territory. Why wouldn’t the U.S. place nuclear weapons in Ukraine — they have already done so at military bases within the borders of five other European members of NATO. This in fact violates the spirit of the NPT, another issue that Sanger avoids when he notes that Russia has demanded that the U.S. remove nuclear weapons from the European NATO-member states.

For years the U.S. proclaimed that the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) facilities it was placing in Romania and Poland, on the Russian border, were to protect against an “Iranian threat,” even though Iran had no nuclear weapons or missiles that could reach the U.S. But the dual-use Mark 41 launching systems used in the Aegis Ashore BMD facilities can be used to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, and will be fitted with SM-6 missiles that, if armed with nuclear warheads, could hit Moscow in five-to-six minutes. Putin explicitly warned journalists about this danger in 2016; Russia included the removal of the U.S. BMD facilities in Romania and Poland in its draft treaties presented to the U.S. and NATO last December.

I wonder if Sanger has ever considered what the U.S. response would be if Russia placed missile launching facilities on the Canadian or Mexican border? Would the U.S. consider that a threat, would it demand that Russia remove them or else the U.S. would use military means to do so?

30 Years Ago

Sanger states that today Russia takes a “starkly different from the tone Moscow was taking 30 years ago, when Russian nuclear scientists were being voluntarily retrained to use their skills for peaceful purposes.”

Russians would reply that 30 years ago NATO had not moved to Russian borders and was not flooding Ukraine with hundreds of tons of weapons and the U.S. had not yet overthrown the government in Kiev to install an anti-Russian regime.

While the Times is still considered the U.S. “paper of record,” during the last few decades it has devolved into the primary mouthpiece for the official narratives coming from Washington.

There is a real danger to the nation when a free press is replaced with corporate media that stifles and censors dissent. Rather than a free press, we now have a Ministry of Propaganda that acts as an echo chamber for the latest diktats from the White House. The systematic creation of false narratives by corporate media, designed to serve the purposes of the federal government, have so misinformed the American public about world events that we find the nation ready to go to war with Russia.

This is suicidal course for not only the U.S. and the EU, but for civilization as a whole, because this would likely end in a nuclear war that will destroy all nations and peoples.

Steven Starr is the former director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program, and former board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. His articles have been published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Federation of American Scientists and the Strategic Arms Reduction website of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He maintains the Nuclear Famine website.

August 16, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, media, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment