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Great British Energy –  Nuclear offers £1bn contract for SMR partner

The company is seeking aid in delivering its programme of building a power plant by the 2030s.

Energy Voice July 7th 2026, 

Great British Energy – Nuclear is seeking a delivery partner for its small modular reactor (SMR) programme in a £1.08 billion procurement contract.

The successful applicant will support the state-backed company deliver its programme by providing expertise across programme management, infrastructure delivery, commercial management, engineering support, and risk management.

Working alongside GB Energy – Nuclear, the company will help drive collaboration across suppliers, support effective programme delivery, and ensure value for money over the lifetime of the programme

The procurement process will include an initial selection stage, followed by tender. evaluation, dialogue, due diligence and a final selection stage before the appointment of a preferred bidder. Tenders must be submitted by 6 August 2026.

The long-term deal has the possibility of running until 2046.

Great British Energy – Nuclear interim chief commercial officer Beverley Grey said. “The appointment of a delivery partner will help ensure we have the capability, expertise and capacity needed to support the successful development and delivery of our Small Modular Reactor programme.

“This is a significant long-term procurement which will bring together technical, commercial and project delivery expertise to help us achieve our objectives and support the delivery of new nuclear capacity in the UK.”

GB Energy – Nuclear has £2.6bn to spend on its SMR programme and previously brought in Rolls‑Royce to provide the design the reactors………………………..

The government-run scheme aims to deliver a new nuclear power plant using SMRs by the mid-2030s, helping the UK seize part of a market estimated to be worth £500bn by 2050. https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/nuclear/600336/gb-energy-nuclear-smr-partner/

July 12, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Report From House Dems: Trump Used 250th Planning to Hide Corruption

By these and other means, Freedom 250, built on deception and manipulation from the beginning, effectively, in the House report’s terms, “sold access to the President, solicited foreign money in America’s name, and enabled the President to enrich himself.”

Trump’s Freedom 250 shadow organization was a vehicle for soliciting political donations, a new report contends.

By Tyler Walicek , Truthout July 7, 2026

The U.S.’s vaunted semiquincentennial anniversary celebrations on July 4 were not, ultimately, the moment of civic unification that had been envisioned a decade ago, when planning for the event began. It was inevitable that the ceremonies would be tainted by the tense and polarized state of the nation. President Donald Trump, however, in his signature way, managed to exacerbate and accelerate the existing grotesqueries and absurdities of the occasion.

From the ramshackle, propaganda-infused Great American State Fair to a Washington, D.C. Fourth of July rally that was filled with jingoist demagoguery from Trump — who boasted of annihilating Iran and took shots at recent “communist” wins in Democratic primaries — the ceremonies were a fitting reflection of a divided and tottering empire in its 250th year.

But a look at the converging interests that produced the kitsch-suffused debacle shows the commemoration’s true depths of venality. In fact, the misuse of the semiquincentennial has extended far past negligent planning and propaganda and reaches, some Congressional Democrats allege, all the way into willful corruption and conspiracy to defraud donors, taxpayers, and the public.

Party Partisans

In months leading up to the weekend, two dueling event-planning commissions struggled over the tone and emphasis of the events. America250 is the congressionally approved semiquincentennial event planning group; since 2016, it has been tasked with producing a nationwide program involving numerous festivals and public-spirited educational events, charity drives, a parade with marching bands and floats, a student essay contest, and much more.

Trump’s initial attempt to domineer the festivities involved adding a puppet executive director to the existing planning group, appointing one Ariel Abergel to lord over America250 in May 2025. Abergel was a former Fox News producer; he was also 25 years old at the time of his appointment. Abergel’s contentious tenure was marked by his efforts to shift the content of the celebrations to a veneration of both Trump and his right-wing ideals. Abergel was fired by the bipartisan Semiquincentennial Commission that oversees America250………………………………………………..

After Abergel’s ouster, Trump, true to form, pursued even less subtle tactics to seize control of the proceedings……………………………………………….

The redundant Freedom 250 committee, incarnated, in a highly unusual structure, as a limited-liability corporation within the federal, nonprofit National Park Foundation, would go on to plan the pro-Trump flop known as the “Great American State Fair.” ……………………………………

Unaccountable Accounting

Freedom 250’s funding structures present even deeper problems than its staging of manipulative right-wing propaganda at an ostensibly nonpartisan occasion. (The tonal dissonances and reactionary kitsch reached a low, perhaps, with the AI-generated talking George Washington in the PragerU “Freedom Truck” display………………………………………………………………

a grab for power and money was already apparent and in full view. As mentioned, the unnecessary Freedom 250 committee was embedded, jarringly, in the National Park Foundation, where it captured federal grants and diverted millions in funding from the America250 semiquincentennial budget to itself. …………………………………………………………………..

Trump has continued to buy and sell stocks in his personal portfolio throughout his presidency, including stock in companies, like Palantir, that have given to Freedom 250. The president’s 2026 disclosure reveals no less than $2.2 billion in gains through trading practices that have continued unobstructed: Trump’s terms in office have rendered the term “conflict of interest” inadequate, failing as it does to capture the breadth and magnitude of such flagrant affronts to executive ethics.

But the funding structure of Freedom 250 indicates a new variety of sleight-of-hand. By creating an LLC within nonprofit fundraisers like the National Park Foundation (which would normally function simply to raise donations for the National Park Service), Zibel explained, “They’ve been able to take these nonprofit structures and use them as an opaque slush fund, essentially, where anybody can donate, and there’s really no requirement for timely disclosure of who’s funding this stuff. We have no idea. We only know the names of the corporate donors because they’re listed on the Freedom 250 website.”

Those sponsors and partners include major oil companies, multiple military contractors, healthcare giants, tech and AI companies, credit card companies, agribusiness and more. “There’s no legal requirement that these be disclosed, because this has never happened before — and we have no idea how much they’re donating,” said Zibel. The American Prospect reported on the pitch deck for Freedom 250’s donor solicitation package, which offered sponsorship tiers up to and above $10 million. OpenSecrets has also documented, as a sort of proxy metric to give insight into corporate influence on the 250th, a broader surge in disclosed lobbying by some of the same companies sponsoring Freedom 250.

“Many of these companies have interests before the federal government,” Zibel commented. “Obviously, the defense contractors like Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, and Palantir are huge — Raytheon, which is now called RTX — some of the biggest federal contractors in the country, and they’re all sponsoring it. There are some oil and gas companies, which are pretty allied with the administration. So, most of the companies have some sort of regulatory interest or contracting interest before the government, and presumably want to stay on Trump’s good side. He’s known, of course, for punishing companies and people who aren’t on his good side.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………By these and other means, Freedom 250, built on deception and manipulation from the beginning, effectively, in the House report’s terms, “sold access to the President, solicited foreign money in America’s name, and enabled the President to enrich himself.”

“Donald Trump’s takeover of the 250th is an affront to the American people,” as Toni Aguilar Rosenthal, program director of investigative projects at the Revolving Door Project, a corruption watchdog, told Truthout. “The semiquincentennial could have, and should have, provided the country an opportunity to come together to engage with shared, complicated, and often inconvenient, truths about our nation’s history.”

Rosenthal offered a fitting summation of what transpired instead: “This administration has turned the anniversary into something akin to a private party handcrafted for the President’s personal tastes, and a major windfall for the private political allies of his administration. The American public, meanwhile, will be left picking up the tab long after Trump’s toxic-250 smog has finally settled over D.C.” https://truthout.org/articles/report-from-house-dems-trump-used-250th-planning-to-hide-corruption/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=08b91d81e0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_07_07_09_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-08b91d81e0-650192793

July 12, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

 Here’s why Labour’s nuclear plans are wrong for Scotland

THE UK Government has used the distraction of Andy Burnham’s coronation and the
row over defence spending to quietly push out a report that sets out where
they would like to build new nuclear power plants in Scotland.

However, it hasn’t gone unnoticed by energy experts. The report from GB Energy
Nuclear, titled “Technical Advice on Potential Future Nuclear Power Plant
Siting in Scotland”, is suitably tentative – any new build would depend
on the SNP making a complete about-turn on policy to allow the development
of plants that Scottish planning legislation explicitly blocks.

New nuclear power plants are consistently vastly behind schedule and over-budget,
whilst Scotland’s renewable energy revolution continues to deliver ever
greater contributions to meeting our energy demands. However, this new
report not only explicitly states where Labour would like to see new plants
built, it also quietly notes the risks development at those sites would
create for communities and our environment.

Whilst Torness, Dounreay, and Hunterston are earmarked, it also singles out the north shore of the Forth Estuary, the south bank of the Forth, and the Angus and Aberdeenshire coast. Note the common theme here – these are all coastal sites,
variously flagged for risks to Sites of Special Scientific Interest
(SSSIs), Special Protected Areas (SPAs), cultural heritage, and flooding
risks.

Those in Fife and Stirlingshire have particular reasons to be
worried. Coastal management is a difficult and complex task as it is. As
climate change brings increases in extreme weather events, coastal erosion,
sea level rise, and storm surges, tough decisions are being made about
which coastal areas will be defended, and how, and which will be subject to
managed retreats that will provide greater resilience for communities and
critical infrastructure.

Added to which, however we decide to manage one
stretch of coastline will have impacts on other stretches. This is why we
have a National Marine Plan. That work is hard enough without dropping in
new security-critical sites that would exacerbate existing problems and
make it even harder to manage and protect our often-fragile coastlines.
Furthermore, siting new plants further inland, for example along the Forth,
is no less risky.

The report notes that demand for cooling water is likely
to be a limiting factor, and that no supporting flow data for that part of
the Forth is currently available. Far from being “secure”, new nuclear
will build in greater insecurity and costs to our electricity supply. If
England, which has long lagged far behind Scotland in deploying renewables,
wishes to take those risks that’s a matter for its own electorate.
Scotland doesn’t need to follow suit, and no amount of scaremongering,
cajoling, or false promises from Shanks or the nuclear industry should
persuade our government to think otherwise.

 The National 7th July 2026,
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/26260100.labours-nuclear-plans-wrong-scotland/

July 11, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Labour ‘scaremongering’ to push Scotland into new nuclear, experts say

By Xander Elliards, The National 7th July 2026

 LABOUR ministers are “scaremongering” in the hope of pressuring
Scotland into building new nuclear power stations, a group of energy
experts has warned. Writing a joint article for The National, six academics
suggested that the UK Government was using “false promises” of a
“golden age of nuclear in England and Wales” in order to try and force
a U-turn from the Scottish Government.

As it stands, the SNP have an
effective veto on any new nuclear developments north of the Border because
planning laws are devolved to Holyrood. However, the UK Government last
week published a GB Energy report scoping out Scottish sites that could
host a new nuclear power plant, and on Tuesday UK energy minister Michael
Shanks said Labour will do “everything we can to move forward”.

Writing for The National, Dr Keith Baker, Dr Paul Dorfman, Professor Peter
Strachan, Dr Ian Fairlie, Professor Lynn Jamieson, and Gordon Morgan argued
that Scotland does not need any new nuclear energy plants “and no amount
of scaremongering, cajoling, or false promises from Shanks or the nuclear
industry should persuade our government to think otherwise”.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/26260544.labour-scaremongering-push-scotland-new-nuclear-experts-say/

July 11, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Radioactive Taxpayer Cash Cow, Canada 2026

Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force Canada, July 2026

Critics from civil society organizations and academia are calling out the Nuclear Energy Strategy for Canada released on Jun. 22 by the federal government as a cash cow for the nuclear industry. This hubris-driven attempt to grab world “energy superpower” status based on past-century technology will be accomplished without public input. The document reads like a wish list of nuclear developments, including the goal of 10 new large reactor projects in Canada by 2040.

This strategy is a gross economic mistake, dangerous for human health and security, and a diversion from urgently needed action on safer, faster and cheaper renewable energy. This benefits only the fossil fuel sector (during reactor construction) and the nuclear industry to the tune of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars – because nuclear power is by far the most expensive of all electricity sources and is unnecessary to reach net zero.

The document also promises to “streamline” the regulation of nuclear projects by removing independent oversight and speeding up approvals. This presents huge public risks when dealing with inherently dangerous technology like nuclear power.

The government is promoting the export of home-grown CANDU reactors, potentially facilitating the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as happened when Canada gifted reactor technology to India, sparking an arms race in South Asia.

The pressing issue of nuclear waste is sandwiched into the section of the strategy on massive expansion of uranium production, with false reassurances that the problem has been solved by handing management of nuclear waste over to the nuclear industry.

A proposed deep geological repository for high-level waste proposed for northwestern Ontario is assumed, despite major questions and opposition, including legal challenges. Two days after the Nuclear Strategy was released the federal government announced that the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s proposed DGR was a “Project of National Interest”, meaning that its approval would be guaranteed without an appropriate health, safety and environmental assessment.

July 11, 2026 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

NATO IS FAILING UKRAINE

Ukraine has received up to $470 billion in combined aid and lending since the war started.

In 2021, Ukraine’s gross domestic product, the total economic output produced in the country during that one year, was $200 billion.

AT THE ANKARA SUMMIT, LEADERS SHOULD GET BEHIND PEACE (BUT PROBABLY WON’T)

Jul 07, 2026I, ,an Proud, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/nato-is-failing-ukraine?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=205725934&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

NATO is destroying Ukraine by funnelling money into it for a war against Russia that cannot be won.

Every mutli-billion commitment of financial and military assistance to Ukraine is another nail in Ukraine’s coffin.

At the Ankara Summit, NATO leaders should get behind peace in Ukraine, recognising that when the war ends, Ukraine will emerge much weaker than before the war started.

NATO leaders need to own their own failure, and yet I fear they won’t.

Rather, they will continue with more of the same, rendering Ukraine’s death even more painful.

There is a saying that wars are won by economies not armies.

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Ukraine has received up to $470 billion in combined aid and lending since the war started.

In 2021, Ukraine’s gross domestic product, the total economic output produced in the country during that one year, was $200 billion.

So, over the course of four and a half years of war, Ukraine has received aid greater than twice the value of its GDP before the war started, and yet Ukraine’s GDP in 2025 was measured by the World Bank at $213 billion, a rise of just 6.5% since the war started.

The money provided by the west has largely been wasted.

The reason it has been wasted, is that had the war finished in April 2022 after the agreement of a framework peace deal in Istanbul, the vast majority of this money would not have been spent. If the war had ended, and just a proportion of that western funding been spent on developing Ukraine’s economy, the country would be in a far stronger position today.

$470 billion literally amounts to killing Ukraine with fake kindness.

Let’s take a moment to consider that.

Most of that money has been tipped into the coffers of Ukraine’s government and military rather than into the real economy.

Ukraine’s government spending in 2021 was $67.6 billion.

Ukraine’s government spending in 2025 was $134 billion, twice as high as in 2021.

Ukraine’s industrial production is at 74% of its prewar level, in particular in heavy industry, especially basic chemicals (42.8% of pre-war levels), metals (44.5%), mining (39.1%) and refined products (21.8%). And it simply won’t get some of this back, as certain facilities and mines have fallen under Russian control in the Donbas.

Russia’s industrial production has continued to grow, and it 48-53% higher than in 2021 before the war started.

Ukraine invested $10bn less into its economy in 2025 compared to 2021, a drop of 38%.

Investment in Russia’s economy has grown from 23% to over 26% of GDP.

Ukraine’s economy has been hollowed out by war

Ukraine’s debt as a percentage of GDP has surged from 49% in 2021 to an estimated 110% this year.

Russia’s debt to GDP remains below 20%, a slight rise since the war started when it was 14% of GDP.

And the kicker is this, the vast amount of government spending is propped up by loans and donations from western nations which has consistently accounted for around half of all government spending.

And the problems extend beyond the economic.

The population inside of Ukraine has fallen by 25-30%, largely down to mass emigration, together with battlefield losses.

Russia’s population by contrast has seen a modest decline of 0.3-0.5% and is now almost five times larger than Ukraine’s population.

Ukraine’s birthrate has fallen by 38% – 105,000 fewer babies arrived in 2025 compared to 2021. The average birthrate per woman has now fallen to below 1.

Russia produced 1 million more babies in 2025 and it’s fertility rate, while low (1.378) is still significantly higher than in Ukraine.

I person in 3 inside of Ukraine today is a pensioner. For every employed worker there is one pensioner. In the UK, as a comparison, there are 2.6 workers per pensioner and in Russia 1.7-1.8.

When the war ends, there will be huge pressure in western nations to reduce their financial commitments.

That could see a brutal write down in the size of Ukraine’s GDP. If the Ukraine government reduced its spending to pre-war level, that would amount to a sudden drop of 30% in GDP.

Of course, that scale of drop won’t happen, as it will take some time to demobilise its army.

Ukraine will simply not be able to afford to pay for a military of 1 million personnel without further loans from the west. So will have to drive down military costs over time.

They will find that they have a disgruntled veteran class, resentful that a military success was offered by not delivered at a cost of 2.4 million killed and injured so far.

But, for the first time, Ukraine will have its economic fortunes in its hands.

If it chose to, it could do a massive debt restructuring and reopen itself to borrowing on the international markets, having been cut off of international borrowing since the war began.

It would almost certainly see a flood of foreign investment from western nations to rebuild its shattered cities and infrastructure.

It could start the process of weaning itself off of imports and reboot its exports, recognising that it has lost some of its valuable coal exports from the loss of territory.

However, it’s far from guaranteed that Ukraine would return to its prewar population, possibly ever, nor repair its catastrophic demographic crisis, as birthrates were already very low before the war started, at just 1.22 babies per woman.

So, the economic future for Ukraine looks bleak. It will have taken a permanent deadweight loss to its economic potential whenever the war ends.

An economy that is significantly smaller when the war ends compared to before it started. A population that is smaller and not reproducing itself.

However, what should be blindingly obvious is that the economic numbers will continue to get much worse for Ukraine for as long as the war continues.

Ukraine’s deficit of exports over imports will grow.

Industrial production will remain depressed and possibly fall further if Russia paints out Donetsk

Investment in Ukraine’s real economy will continue to slide

Ukraine’s massive debt burden will pile up further.

It is impossible to imagine that Ukraine will have cleaned up its grotesque levels of corruption if the war continues and billions of foreign money continues to pour in. That’s not to say that Russia doesn’t have a corruption problem too, of course. But the difference is, we are sending the billions to Ukraine for Zelensky’s cronies to pilfer.

Ukraine’s population will continue to decline

It will produce fewer babies and move to having more pensioners than workers.

There is no way to reverse any of these trends for as long as the war continues.

The $470 billion that western nations have tipped into Ukraine has been wasted.

And all for what?

What are the factors driving on NATO to keep Ukraine fighting?

The first, is the mistaken view that NATO can use a much smaller economically more fragile country like Ukraine as a battering ram to shatter Russia and inflict a strategic defeat that would topple the Putin government.

All of this is cloaked under the excuse that Ukraine should have the right to choose which military bloc is joins. However, in 2014 before the Ukraine crisis started, a majority of Ukrainians did not support joining NATO, as opposed to the EU, where attitudes were finely balanced in 2013 prior to the Vilnius Eastern Partnership Summit.

For those Ukrainians that did want to join the EU, their choice was soon labelled as a Euro-Atlantic, rather than a European choice after the unconstitutional removal of Viktor Yanukovych as President in February 2014.

The Ukraine crisis has always been about NATO membership.

Whenever efforts were made to broker peace, most notably after the Minsk II Agreement in February 2015 or the Istanbul talks in April 22 after the war started, those efforts were derailed by the Americans, with the help of the British.

And, as it turns out, even though the Europeans have become the major funders of the war in Ukraine since Trump came to power, it is now completely obvious that Ukrainian membership of the EU is further away than it has ever been, not least because of the boorish antics of Zelensky on the world stage, typified by his turning Poland into an irritant after his glorification of World War II Nazi collaborators. Zelensky has variously generated bad blood with other EU nations that he will rely on to obtain EU membership for his country, driven by his towering sense of entitlement and lack of self-awareness.

While I’ve always supported the theory of EU membership for Ukraine, the practice has become more complicated by the continuation of war. Important reforms in Ukraine have not been undertaken or have been held back.

So, the very point of the Maidan movement – if there was ever a point before it was hijacked by Ukrainian ultra-nationalists – has been betrayed by12 years of conflict and now war which has revealed that the true purpose of western sponsors has been to incorporate Ukraine into a military bloc, that not just Putin, but several esteemed western diplomats like Kennan and Matlock, has been saying for at least twenty years was a red line for Russia.

And yet, here was are, on the verge of another NATO summit in which cardboard cutouts like Mark Rutte will continue to insist that Ukraine is part of the NATO family. Further commitments will be made to funnel even more billions in aid into Ukraine to help Zelensky inflict a strategic defeat on Russia that will never happen.

NATO leaders won’t take the cue to end the war. There are just too many vested interests in the west to allow that to happen.

That Zelensky is attending the summit won’t help. He will persuade western leaders – who seem completely unable to say no to him – that they need to let him strike further and further into Russia to inflict pain on Russia’s economy.

And yet, every Ukrainian strike will self-evidently yield another massive retaliation from Russia that heaps suffering on ordinary Ukrainian people.

It won’t change the massive economic and demographic advantages that Russia has over Ukraine and will always have.

It will just prolong the war.

Western mainstream media and politicians are bitterly opposed to ending the war too.

They will trot out the usual tropes.

Russia’s economy is about to implode – it isn’t and I’ve been hearing this for 12 years including while I was in Moscow. Look at the numbers. Ukraine’s economy is in real trouble.

Russian people are turning against Putin because of gasoline shortages in some cities including Moscow. Yes, Russian people are tired of war and Putin has seen a reduction in his popularity, though at 67% it is far higher than anything western leaders enjoy. There is no evidence that Russian people are going to take to the streets to topple Putin. Indeed, Ukraine’s people have suffered far more from the destruction of energy and heating infrastructure during bitter winters. The inconvenience suffered by ordinary Russians is very small in comparison, although that doesn’t mean it isn’t impacting Russia’s domestic politics. The point is, it will never be enough to shift the dial, compared to the significantly greater cost Russia can impose on Ukraine.

Russia is finding it harder to recruit troops to the frontline. This is the worst misinformation of all. Yes, Russia has taken heavy casualties in the war although all the evidence points to Ukraine taking far higher casualties from a smaller population. Body swaps numbers are not a perfect comparator, but on every occasion Ukraine receives at least ten times more bodies than it returns to Russia. And, in any case, every body – Ukrainian or Russian – is a person whose life has been snuffed out by this pointless war.

Russia has avoided a general mobilisation whereas every day there are videos emerging of violent forced mobilisation – busification – of Ukrainian men to be sent to the meat grinder.

Zelensky is the leader of the free world. Utter claptrap. He is a corrupt dictator who absolutely refuses to listen to any advice and will carry on regardless, whatever injury he causes his own country, so long as the west keeps sending him money. Politicians are human and he is no different, I am sad to say. He will not be President of Ukraine after the war ends if fair elections are held. Everyone can see this except the western press. Zelensky biggest challenge when the war ends will be to stay alive, let along to stay inside of Ukraine.

Putin is going to die at any minute. Come on, I’ve been hearing this for twelve years.

Any attempt to get behind a peace settlement will be turned upon by the blob who cry that we are selling out Ukraine and are giving a gift to Putin.

But I am sick and tired of hearing this bullshit. The biggest gift to Putin is to keep the war going on and watch Europe disintegrate politically and economically.

But the only way to secure peace with Russia is through force. Utter nonsense.

Sure, Putin would probably prefer peace now. And, it has always been my impression, that Russia wants to have normal relations with Europe and, in fact, with Ukraine.

But he will not do that under the threat of NATO expansion and has been saying this for over two decades.

So, if NATO leaders want to keep helping Zelensky fight to the last Ukrainian it will be a disgraceful betrayal of the Ukrainian people and of the people of Europe who face a growing threat of general war and all the misery that would ensure, which ordinary Ukrainian people have suffered for four and a half years already.

Zelensky is killing his own country. NATO is helping him do it. We are led by idiots in the west. It’s time to end this nonsense now.

July 10, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, politics | 1 Comment

Scotland could freeze datacentre projects in challenge to UK’s AI strategy

Scottish government to consider SNP national council motion for moratorium on all new datacentres

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/07/scotland-could-freeze-datacentre-projects-in-challenge-to-uks-ai-strategy

The Scottish government is about to consider a sweeping moratorium on building new datacentres, putting a key plank of the UK’s AI strategy at risk.

Last Sunday the Scottish National party (SNP)’s national council passed a motion to freeze all new datacentres in Scotland. That motion has been sent to the Scottish government to consider.

It could apply to all datacentre projects that have not yet received planning permission – although its exact implementation is up to the Scottish government to decide.

Lesley Backhouse, a local councillor from one of the constituencies that put forward the motion, said that Scotland’s current datacentre plans amounted to “overdevelopment” and were “intrusive and not keeping with the local environment”.

The move emerged as the Guardian on Monday revealed how the developer and the UK government misrepresented the technical feasibility of a massive datacentre hub in Scotland in the face of community fears that their land would be subsumed by the development, and promised jobs and investments would never materialise.

This site, in Lanarkshire, was to be an “AI growth zone”, a key element of the government’s strategy to build national AI infrastructure in rural areas of Britain.

The SNP’s resolution came amid signs of a wider upheaval in the UK’s AI strategy as Andy Burnham prepares to replace Keir Starmer in Downing Street. He is reportedly considering a review of several critical planks of Starmer’s technology policy.

The Guardian previously reported that an “AI growth zone” in North Tyneside was more of a publicity stunt than a viable project, despite being supposedly backed by the maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI. Several other big UK AI projects have been found to be “phantom investments” after the government failed to audit investment numbers or jobs claims.

“I don’t think anyone is arguing that we should not have any datacentres in the UK or Scotland,” said Graham Simpson, a member of the Scottish parliament representing North Lanarkshire.

“But there needs to be a proper piece of work at the government level to decide how many the country needs and what is our capacity for them, in terms of our resources.”

A moratorium on datacentres in Scotland could strike at the heart of the UK’s wider AI strategy. British officials have pushed Scotland as the prime location for datacentres due to its access to plentiful renewable energy. The SNP’s resolution could halt projects such as the Lanarkshire AI growth zone.

The SNP resolution suggests that the number of massive datacentres planned in Scotland could overwhelm its renewables capacity.

It says there are 24 “hyperscale” datacentre projects in various stages of planning in Scotland. Combined, they would use more than one-and-a-half times the power Scotland uses at peak demand.

“It is extreme overdevelopment. I’m very supportive of the local community and their endeavours to prevent this from happening,” said Backhouse.

Meanwhile, the chair of the Commons science and technology select committee, Chi Onwurah, on Monday criticised the UK’s broader AI investment strategy, saying that without a proper plan for achieving sovereignty it has been “very opportunistic”.

July 10, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

UK Government scraps public consultation on data centres and major infrastructure projects

Scrapping mandatory pre-application consultation requirements for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects will “disenfranchise” locals and “embed resentment”, experts say. Christine Murray reports

Christine Murray, Editor-in-Chief of The Developer and Director of the Festival of Place 03/07/26, https://www.thedeveloper.live/reportage/government-scraps-public-consultation-on-data-centres-and-major-infrastructure-projects

Just days after hundreds of people gathered near Great Torrington to oppose a £13bn data centre and battery energy storage project in the North Devon UNESCdata centre and battery energy storage project in the North Devon UNESCO Biosphere, the government has announced it is scrapping mandatory public consultation for major infrastructure projects including data centres, wind, solar, reservoirs and nuclear plants.


The changes confirmed on Friday will come into effect later this month on 24 July, before the completion of a government inquiry into the sustainability of data centres in the UK.

re-application consultation requirements for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects will be replaced by “earlier technical support and meaningful advice from the Planning Inspectorate before applications are submitted” through a redesigned pre-application service for developers.

The changes are delivered in the Planning and Infrastructure Act which also places limits on legal challenges to Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.

The news comes amidst calls for increased scrutiny of AI growth zone plans with concern that developers are misrepresenting their plans and making misleading claims about data centres. The  government has announced five AI growth zones including sites in Lanarkshire and North Tyneside.

Oral evidence presented to the Environmental Audit Committee for the government’s data centre inquiry has already highlighted that local people don’t feel sufficiently heard in the planning process and that claims being made about the job creation may be misleading. 

Presenting evidence on 10 June, Oliver Hayes, Head of Policy at Global Act Plan said: “The jobs benefits really don’t seem to be what the developers are claiming.” 

“The data centre in Blythe, Northumberland… said this would lead to 4,000 jobs and the slightest bit of interrogation drew an admission that this actually would be 100 jobs. This is a £10bn investment in Blythe and that means you’re getting 1 job for every £100m pounds.”

“This change is essential given the need to build our own resilience in places across the country in an increasingly uncertain world”

Just days after hundreds of people gathered near Great Torrington to oppose a £13bn data centre and battery energy storage project in the North Devon UNESCO Biosphere, the government has announced it is scrapping mandatory public consultation for major infrastructure projects including data centres, wind, solar, reservoirs and nuclear plants.

The changes confirmed on Friday will come into effect later this month on 24 July, before the completion of a government inquiry into the sustainability of data centres in the UK. 

Pre-application consultation requirements for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects will be replaced by “earlier technical support and meaningful advice from the Planning Inspectorate before applications are submitted” through a redesigned pre-application service for developers.

The changes are delivered in the Planning and Infrastructure Act which also places limits on legal challenges to Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.

The news comes amidst calls for increased scrutiny of AI growth zone plans with concern that developers are misrepresenting their plans and making misleading claims about data centres.

The government has announced five AI growth zones including sites in Lanarkshire and North Tyneside.

Oral evidence presented to the Environmental Audit Committee for the government’s data centre inquiry has already highlighted that local people don’t feel sufficiently heard in the planning process and that claims being made about the job creation may be misleading. 

Presenting evidence on 10 June, Oliver Hayes, Head of Policy at Global Act Plan said: “The jobs benefits really don’t seem to be what the developers are claiming.” 

“The data centre in Blythe, Northumberland… said this would lead to 4,000 jobs and the slightest bit of interrogation drew an admission that this actually would be 100 jobs. This is a £10bn investment in Blythe and that means you’re getting 1 job for every £100m pounds.”

“This change is essential given the need to build our own resilience in places across the country in an increasingly uncertain world” 

Internal correspondence obtained by The Guardian showed the government and developers of the £82bn AI data centre complex in Lanarkshire knew they would not be delivering new on-site renewable energy infrastructure even as they promised it to the public. Instead the data centre will connect to the grid. With an average 8-10 year wait for a grid connection, prioritising data centres could potentially delay electricity for housing developments.

The Scottish government is considering a moratorium on building new data centres, which would affect all data centres that have not yet won planning, as reported by The Guardian. 

Fergus Charlton, planning partner with national law firm Michelmores is concerned about the removal of mandatory public consultation: “Cutting the ability of the public at large and more importantly the local inhabitants – with their special connections to the land and knowledge of their milieu – to inform the design of nationally important infrastructure will further disenfranchise them from the planning process leading to embedded resentment to the system as a whole and the proposed development in particular.

The existing consultation requirements for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects does place a burden on the developer, but it helps strike a fair balance for the local community engaging in an infrastructure planning system that greatly favours the developer,” says Charlton.

“Local residents are getting very concerned and are feeling like they’re not able to participate in that planning process and not able to have their voices heard,” said Hayes. “I think that is a big risk for government.”

“There needs to be real interrogation of what it means to be living in AI growth zones and less of a laissez-faire approach,” Hayes said. 

The government claims cutting consultation will speed up planning applications by as much as 12 months and that infrastructure projects will enter the pipeline at a faster rate. 

Housing Secretary Steve Reed said: “Our reforms will get work started quicker on wind farms, solar panels and transport links to connect our communities and grow our economy.” 

Energy Minister Michael Shanks said: “Britain cannot afford to wait years for the clean energy infrastructure needed to strengthen our energy security and grow the economy.” 

The government says that data centres can opt into the National Significant Infrastructure Projects with three data centre proposals being included: Wapseys Wood in Buckinhamshire, Ampthill Road in Bedford and New Barn Lane in Dartford. 

The government says it will encourage the earlier submission of Local Impact Reports alongside relevant representations.

July 10, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | 1 Comment

SNP call for temporary ban on AI data centre developments.

 THE SNP are set to back calls for a temporary ban on AI data centre
developments, The National can reveal. It comes after months of community
protest against proposed sites across the country, as well as pushback from
several MSPs from various parties. The SNP will now join the Scottish
Greens in calling for a Scottish Government-led moratorium on AI data
centre developments after a vote of the party’s National Council, a key
decision-making body in the party’s organisation.

The two parties hold a
clear majority in Holyrood, so if a moratorium is formally proposed by
either party it would likely pass, especially as figures from Labour, the
LibDems, Conservatives and Reform UK have all raised concerns about data
centre projects in their areas. However, it could be challenged on a point
of law from the developers.

 The National 6th July 2026, https://www.thenational.scot/news/26257080.snp-call-temporary-ban-ai-data-centre-developments/

July 10, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Dunfermline MSP speaks out at possible Longannet nuclear site

By Hannah Emma Shedden, 3rd July, https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/26250982.dunfermline-msp-speaks-possible-longannet-nuclear-site/

A DUNFERMLINE MSP has called on the UK Government to rule out any future nuclear development at the former Longannet Power Station site in West Fife.

Shirley-Anne Somerville’s call follows a UK Government assessment of potential sites for new nuclear development, which appeared to identify the former power station as a candidate location.

Currently, through devolved powers, the Scottish Government have the power to block planning, and has said it would not permit the building of any stations.

So far, MSPs David Barratt and Mark Ruskell have come out against the plans, while MP Graeme Downie has said it would be “a wasted opportunity” to ignore nuclear energy.

Ms Somerville has now written to the UK’s Minister of State for Energy, Michael Shanks, urging him to remove the site from consideration.

She said: “Longannet should not be considered for a new nuclear power station, and I’ve told the Labour UK Government this directly.

“The SNP’s position on this is a long-standing one; we do not support new nuclear power stations in Scotland and communities in West Fife should not have one imposed on them.

“What this process really looks like is Labour’s much-hyped GB Energy searching for a mission to justify the money that’s been ploughed into it, rather than backing the clean industries Scotland is actually good at.

“Longannet powered Scotland for decades, and I want that site to go on playing a role in our energy future.

“However, that future must be built on clean energy, not on a technology that’s slow, expensive, and leaves radioactive waste behind for future generations to manage.

“I’ve therefore asked the UK Government to take Longannet off the table and to respect Scotland’s clear and consistent opposition to new nuclear development.”

July 9, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Flatteries and falsehoods – A multi-million dollar PR campaign can’t hide nuclear power’s ugly truth

Apparently there is at least one issue BOTH parties in these divided states of America seem to wholeheartedly agree on. How perverse that it is support for the dying nuclear power industry that can only survive through massive government subsidies and a slick propaganda campaign designed to deceive the American public into believing it’s clean and safe.

 Sharleen Leahey,   by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/07/05/flatteries-and-falsehoods/

Consider for a moment being a ‘fly on the wall’ silently viewing the goings-on among a bunch of NukeBros at a recent Holtec* Meetup. Andrew Zwicker, a New Jersey State Senator, is in attendance. Casually co-opting language from the environmental movement, a PR guy  declares, “Our young people are increasingly embracing nuclear power as the key to a clean energy future!”

You have entered a room occupied by men who speak with forked tongues. No million dollar PR campaign can alter the awful truth: Nuclear power is not clean. It is not safe, not affordable, nor is it the solution to our climate crisis.

Nuclear power has shown itself over many decades to be a ticking time bomb. What the nuclear industry and its promoters do not want to discuss is the high-level radioactive waste generated by each and every nuclear reactor they plan to build. This waste has nowhere to go. It will be lethal for hundreds of thousands of years. The plain fact they cannot deny is that no permanent storage repository exists where high-level radioactive nuclear waste can be safely sequestered for thousands of generations into the future.

To State Senator Zwicker, also a Science Professor, I pose two simple questions: How can you ignore the mountain of scientific and historical evidence proving  that nuclear power technology poses a grave danger to living beings and the environment?  Why are you failing to “follow the science”?

Marie Curie was one of history’s most renowned scientists. Her groundbreaking discovery of radioactivity led to the invention of the first x-ray equipment for medical use. She personally saved the lives of  many soldiers during WWI by enabling battlefield surgeons to locate and remove bullets and shrapnel from their wounded bodies. Tragically the radioactive elements Marie Curie utilized to save lives, eventually killed her.

The French Government buried Marie  Curie with honors. They placed her remains in a lead coffin to protect the public and environment from her contaminated body. If Marie could see us now I imagine she’d be shocked that after almost one hundred years since her untimely death caused by radiation poisoning, our heedless political leaders are failing to protect us from its now well-documented deadly effects.

After the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown in 1979, the American public became alerted to the threat nuclear power posed. Armies of citizen activists mobilized to oppose the construction of new reactors. They organized grassroots alliances  throughout the US to resist the power of the nuclear lobby. They educated the public through teach-ins, demonstrations and nonviolent civil disobedience. 

Musicians including Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen formed Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE). They performed live concerts attended by thousands. Millions of Americans recognized that nuclear power poses a threat to the health of living beings now and to future generations not yet born. It had to be stopped. And it was.

Despite a massive cover-up by the industry and government agencies, after the accident at TMI no new nuclear plants were built in the U.S. until President Obama approved new funding in 2010.

Over six decades later our nuclear power nightmare is returning. It is being unleashed on us by an industry counting on the American public’s infamous historical amnesia. A so-called “nuclear renaissance” is being propelled by voracious energy consuming AI Data Centers. Public Citizen founder and long-time nuclear power critic Ralph Nader warns of dire consequences for our health, our environment and our economy if the “big fools” are allowed to push on.

After the TMI accident in 1979, two catastrophic nuclear reactor meltdowns at Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) caused untold thousands of people (including children) to develop fatal cancers. Many villages in Ukraine, Belarus and Japan were evacuated, their residents forced to flee. Homes, businesses, farms, possessions and pets were abandoned. The extent of the devastation on the lives of people, and animals can never be fully known but authors, filmmakers and independent researchers still strive to tell their tragic stories.

In light of the dark history of nuclear power, you would  think that our Governor and legislators representing the people of the State of New Jersey would decisively say “no” to this dangerous technology. You would be wrong. On April 8, 2026 Governor Mikie Sherrill signed Senate bill S3780 into law. This legislation overturned a 50-year moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power reactors in our State. The law was fast-tracked through committee hearings in both chambers of the Legislature in record time (less than a month total). Unanimous approval by both Republicans and Democrats ensued. 

Though each and every one of our elected State officials solemnly swore an oath to protect their constituents, it’s plain to see that in this case party bosses, corporate lobbyists and resident pay-to-players are calling the shots. Yet I refuse to believe that objections to nuclear power by voters and grassroots activists can continue to be ignored. The people who live here, work here, raise children and grandchildren here, pay utility bills and taxes here (and the salaries of our elected officials), are the ones who will ultimately bear the risks of increased radioactivity. The struggle to protect our air, water, land and the health of our families and neighbors (including our wildlife), make it increasingly urgent that the voices of residents who oppose the funding, building and siting of new nuclear reactors here in our State be heard and heeded.

Apparently there is at least one issue BOTH parties in these divided states of America seem to wholeheartedly agree on. How perverse that it is support for the dying nuclear power industry that can only survive through massive government subsidies and a slick propaganda campaign designed to deceive the American public into believing it’s clean and safe. It’s time for taxpayers and ratepayers everywhere to demand that the officials we voted into office prioritize our health and safety and that of our environment (including our dwindling wildlife population), over the profits and agendas of the morbidly wealthy .001%!

NJ Governor Mikie Sherrill  appointed a paid Holtec Lobbyist to sit on her newly created Nuclear Task Force. 

This is NOT what Democracy looks like!

*Holtec claims to specialize in nuclear waste management and reactor decommissioning. They are based in Camden, NJ. If the CEO gets his way, Holtec is poised to construct NJ’s new crop of nuclear reactors known as SMRs (Small Modular Reactors). Holtec is the very same company now being sued by New York State’s Governor Hochul and Environmental groups to stop Holtec’s horrifying plan to dump over one million gallons of radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River. The contaminated water resulted from Holtec’s ongoing decommissioning of the now shuttered Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. The notorious plant was forced to close after years of unrelenting grassroots activism and lawsuits by NY residents.

Sharleen Leahey is a peace and justice activist and writer. She can be reached at: women4justicecoalition@gmail.com

July 8, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

MSP says ‘no’ to nuclear power plant as UK Government eyes Fife

4th July, By Hannah Emma Shedden, https://www.thenational.scot/news/26253439.msp-says-no-nuclear-power-plant-uk-government-eyes-fife/

FIFE has been revealed as a potential site for a nuclear power plant in a new UK Government report – but a local MSP says it “wouldn’t go down well” with communities.

The document, titled ‘Potential future nuclear power plant siting in Scotland ‘, published on Tuesday, June 30, was penned by both the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Great British Energy – Nuclear.

Ordered by Ed Miliband, the document’s scope was to offer “technical advice” on potential future sites.

In a section called “Land Areas of Interest”, Fife was identified as one of the areas across eastern Scotland which could be eyed up for new development by the UK Government.

The report read: “The northern shore of the Firth of Forth benefits from a strong industrial heritage, existing brownfield land, good transport connections and historic use of river water for power station cooling.

“The presence of previous energy generation sites and proximity to major industrial hubs supports technical suitability.”

SNP MSP for Cowdenbeath, David Barratt said: “The document implies quite heavily, I would say, about nuclear power at Longannet. It’s talking about a site on the north side of the Forth, in close proximity to areas of flood risk and oil and gas.

“The SNP’s position aligns, from my perspective, closely with what communities think. I don’t think if you went to any community and asked them whether they like a nuclear power station next door, I struggle to imagine any in Fife, or along the Forth shore, would say yes please.

“I don’t think that would go down well at all with communities (near Longannet) who have put up with enough environmental consequences of that site. Scotland is blessed with an abundance of renewable sources, and we don’t require nuclear.”

The new report picks out six areas in total that the government sees as ripe for the development of nuclear sites.
Torness Nuclear Power Plant in East Lothian, which is scheduled to end operations in 2030, Dounreay Nuclear site in Caithness, and Hunterston Nuclear Power Plant and the surrounding coast in North Ayrshire.

Both Dounreay and Hunterston are currently being decommissioned.

As well as the Forth, it selected two other larger areas, such as the south bank of the Forth in Stirling and the Aberdeenshire and Angus coast.

Overall, it came to the conclusion that “Scotland has land areas with high potential for new nuclear development”.

But the Scottish Government have pushed back, claiming that the report was put together “secretly” and that the push for nuclear energy “ignored the hard economic and environmental facts”.

They went on to cite financial inefficiency, longitude of developments, and a “deadly legacy of radioactive waste”.

On next steps, the document added: “Should the policy position of the Scottish Government change, specific local considerations and uncertainties notwithstanding, several significant land areas appear to offer suitable terrain, ready access to a source of cooling water, transport access by road, rail and sea as well as access to a skilled workforce, indicating a new nuclear power plant could be hosted.”

But the Scottish Government said: “Scotland does not need dangerous, extortionate nuclear white elephants built in our communities against our will. The Scottish Parliament has already passed an SNP motion demanding that power over our energy resources be fully devolved to Holyrood.”

July 8, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Canadian nuclear site question would become ‘how’ not ‘whether’ under new law

Officials have previously said the project to bury nuclear waste in Northwestern Ontario is not a “done deal,” but that would change if it becomes a nationally-significant project.


Matt Prokopchuk, July 2, 2026, https://www.nwonewswatch.com/local-news/nuclear-site-question-could-become-how-not-whether-under-new-law-12501083

REVELL LAKE — If a proposed underground facility to store nuclear waste is made a project of national interest, it’s virtually guaranteed to get federal approval.

The Major Projects Office will decide whether it gets listed under the Building Canada Act as project of national interest, with that decision scheduled for the fall.

Should that happen, “the focus of the federal review would shift from ‘whether’ the project should proceed to ‘how’ it should proceed,” Privy Council Office spokesperson Pierre-Alain Bujold said in an email.

TThat would be a significant change from what the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, who has been leading the integrated study of the deep geological repository, told residents at public meetings about the proposed Revell Lake-area site to store high-level spent fuel from Canada’s nuclear power plants.

“It’s not a done deal that the project will happen,” an IAAC official said at an April 22 meeting in Melgund, an unorganized community about 12 kilometres away from the proposed site, citing the years-long ongoing impact assessment that is scheduled to end around 2030 with a final report and decision by appropriate senior ministers.

The repository’s proponent is the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, or NWMO, a government-mandated not-for-profit funded by the nuclear industry and tasked with the long-term management of Canada’s nuclear waste.

That distinction between “whether” a project gets greenlit versus “how” is important, said Brennain Lloyd, a project coordinator with environmental group Northwatch and a volunteer with We the Nuclear Free North.
“Meaning that it is absolutely a done deal, which really, really, really strongly demonstrates that they don’t understand that the NWMO project is still a concept,” she said. “It’s in the development stage, it’s full of uncertainty.”
The Impact Assessment Agency declined to comment, directing questions to the Major Projects Office.

Bujold said, if the project gets listed, it means all its federal approvals required under a slate of acts of parliament and federal regulations would be “granted through a consolidated federal process.” That review concludes with a “conditions document” which “is the legal equivalent of all required permits, decisions or authorizations under the applicable federal statutes,” Bujold added.

“Once a project is listed, no other Governor in Council decisions are needed,” he said, adding that the federal sign-off is still subject to “applicable” Indigenous treaty-based processes and consultations.

This allows for greater coordination, reduced delays and more certainty for proponents and investors, while protecting the environment and respecting Indigenous rights.”

If the deep geological repository gets deemed a nationally-significant project, the ongoing impact assessment process would continue, Bujold said, where it would “inform” that final conditions document.

“The proponent would be required to comply with those conditions as the project proceeds through construction and operation.”

Lloyd and other anti-nuclear advocates have pointed to the hundreds of public comments already submitted during the current impact assessment’s consultation phases, with many expressing concern or outright opposition citing long-term safety and the issue of site-to-site transportation, among other things.

Transportation along highways and rail was not included in the NWMO’s initial project description, with the Impact Assessment Agency saying it was a “common concern” raised by many.

A summary of draft guidelines posted by the assessment agency earlier in 2026 calls on the NWMO to provide more information on that front, including that its work “must assess potential adverse effects of project-related transportation on the applicable valued components within an area surrounding the project site, along with the intersections along Highway 17 that will be required for site access.”

The Building Canada Act is not about bypassing approvals,” Bujold said.

He said the necessary licences the waste repository would require from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission are still separate; those don’t start getting issued until after Ottawa’s approval.

If federal approval becomes a sure thing, Lloyd said she’s concerned the Nuclear Safety Commission’s work would amount to “simply tinkering with the deal.”

July 8, 2026 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

This EU state’s anti-Russian crusade has become a strategic dead end

Poland wanted to use Ukraine against Russia, now Kiev is using Poland

2 Jul, 2026 20:09By Timofey Bordachev, Program Director of the Valdai Club, https://www.rt.com/russia/642505-eu-states-anti-russian-crusade/

The situation in which Poland now finds itself is a good example of how even a relatively successful country can drive itself into a foreign policy impasse through the narrowness of its own thinking.

Poland is not, by modern standards, an inept state and its economy is growing, its institutions function and it occupies an important place in European affairs. Yet its foreign policy has been reduced to a single organizing principle: opposition to Russia. Warsaw has designated Moscow as its ideal adversary and has subordinated almost every other aspect of its external activity to the goal of harming Russia by any means available.

This applies first and foremost to Poland’s relationship with the Kiev regime. It would be naïve to believe that Polish politicians have ever held many illusions about the nature of the authorities in Ukraine and nor have they traditionally had warm feelings towards their Ukrainian neighbors. On the contrary, the Polish elite’s attitude to Ukraine has long been shaped by contempt and historical suspicion and this view has been formed over centuries and, it must be admitted, has not emerged without reason.

Nevertheless, in recent years Warsaw has made itself Kiev’s most energetic advocate in Europe as it’s supplied Ukraine with vast quantities of weapons and has turned its own territory into the main logistical hub for Western military aid. At the same time, the Polish authorities have done everything possible to destroy channels of dialogue with Moscow and Minsk, casting Poland as Russia’s most irreconcilable opponent, even by the standards of the wider West.Among all the countries that matter in European politics, Poland chose the most radical course during the current military and political crisis. The logic was simple, if Ukraine could be used against Russia, then Ukraine had to be supported, whatever the cost.

The problem is that Warsaw convinced itself of something that was never realistic in that it imagined that Ukraine could serve as a powerful Polish instrument for containing Russia while remaining manageable and responsive to Polish requests. Some in Poland also appear to have believed that Kiev was fighting for a European choice and that its desire to join NATO and the European Union would make it more accommodating.

Both assumptions were wrong and the Ukrainian authorities have behaved towards their Polish patrons in exactly the way one should have expected. They have taken what was offered, demanded more, and then publicly insulted and humiliated those who helped them. The recent exchange of awards and diplomatic gestures is only the most visible symptom of a deeper problem after Poland imagined a relationship that couldn’t exist and then built a strategy around this chimera.

As a result, Polish foreign policy now looks absurd as Warsaw has invested enormous political and emotional capital in Ukraine, only to find that Kiev feels no need to show gratitude. Worse still for Poland, there is no obvious way out because a serious confrontation with Kiev would undermine the whole anti-Russian structure of Polish policy, while continuing as before means accepting repeated humiliation.

This is not an accident and it flows from the central fixation of Polish foreign policy, Russia as the sole true object of Warsaw’s interest in the world.

That fixation has deep historical roots as for Poland, Russia isn’t merely a neighboring power, but a source of complexes and envy on a scale rarely found in modern European politics. Russia deprived Poland of any chance of becoming the leader of the Slavic world and later, the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union shaped the conditions under which modern Polish political culture developed. The struggle against Russian domination became one of the defining themes of Polish public life.

In effect, opposition to Russia helped create modern Polish identity, but it left the political elite with little ability to look at the world through any other prism. The result is the mindset of a sizeable European nation whose foreign policy imagination has room for almost nothing except the struggle against its great eastern neighbor.

The career of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the American political thinker of Polish origin, embodied this drama. He wrote a series of striking works on international relations, but almost everything in them was subordinated to the Russian question, which meant his intellectual universe was large in appearance, but in practice revolved around one object.

After the end of the Cold War, Poland’s entry into the Western world only reinforced this pattern. Warsaw could no longer openly pursue its traditional suspicions of Germany because NATO and the European Union confined those instincts within institutional limits. It’s true that Poland’s current rearmament program has a potential anti-German dimension, but it also reflects a desire to become Washington’s most important continental ally as Britain and France weaken. However, in the medium term, Poland’s hands are tied in the West by American interests in preserving NATO and the EU.

That leaves Russia and here the Polish elite feels entirely at home as, for two centuries, it has trained itself to think of little else. Now, however, reality is intruding because Kiev is behaving as Kiev was always likely to behave, taking Polish support for granted, glorifying figures whom many Poles regard as war criminals, and treating Warsaw not as a patron but as a useful subordinate.

Still, the current crisis is unlikely to produce a military clash between Poland and Ukraine, or even a genuine political break. Nor will it lead to a significant reduction in Polish support for Kiev and we can already see the dispute being presented as an internal Polish quarrel, a by-product of rivalry within Warsaw’s ruling elite. In this version, the problem isn’t Kiev’s conduct but Poland’s own domestic politics and this is convenient.

It allows Polish politicians to avoid confronting the failure of their strategy. After a few rounds of public argument, they will probably try to push the matter aside and return to business as usual. To do otherwise would mean admitting that Poland has no coherent foreign policy beyond its hostility to Russia.

Kiev understands this perfectly and it has no reason to make concessions because Poland has backed itself into a corner. Warsaw cannot withdraw support from Ukraine without damaging the central myth of its own policy and therefore Kiev can continue to insult and ignore Polish sensitivities, confident that the aid will keep coming.

This is the deeper humiliation as Poland, unable to formulate a foreign policy that is not anti-Russian, inevitably becomes an instrument of other people’s interests. For many years these were primarily American and British interests, but now Poland also finds itself serving the interests of the Kiev regime, a government entirely dependent on outside support but still capable of dictating the emotional terms of its relationship with Warsaw.

All this is especially strange because Poland has no urgent need to behave this way given it’s one of the few major European countries whose economy is still growing at a steady pace, roughly 3.3 to 3.6 percent a year. A more self-confident country might have used this position to consolidate, enrich itself and avoid unnecessary geopolitical adventures.

But Poland can’t do that. A relatively large country must have a foreign policy and since Warsaw has no foreign policy idea except opposition to Russia, it will continue to move in circles.

That’s the trap Poland has built for itself. It imagined that Ukraine could be used as a weapon against Russia, but instead, it’s discovered that those who define themselves only by hostility to Moscow are easily used by others.

This article was first published by Vzglyad newspaper and translated and edited by the RT team.

July 8, 2026 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Lithuania to lift ban on nukes, president says

The country’s constitution bans nuclear weapons and foreign military bases, but its parliamentary leaders have agreed that this provision is now “outdated.”

July 2, 2026 , By Jonas Loesel, https://www.politico.eu/article/lithuanias-leaders-want-lift-ban-nukes-president-says/

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said Thursday that there was “practically unanimous” support among party leaders for ending the country’s ban on nuclear weapons.

“Opinions were practically unanimous. Almost all parliamentary faction leaders expressed the view that Article 137 has become obsolete and should not merely be amended but removed,” Nausėda told reporters, referring to the section of Lithuania’s constitution that bans nuclear weapons and foreign military bases.

Speaking after meeting with parliamentary faction leaders, Nausėda indicated that the legislature would soon look to amend the legislation. Vilnius, a staunch ally of Ukraine, has previously indicated interest in hosting U.S. nuclear weapons as it looks for deterrents against neighboring Russia.

Lithuania joined NATO in 2004, and Nausėda said the country’s parliamentary leaders did not want to be in a “gray zone” within the military alliance as one of the only countries that continues to ban nuclear weapons. Finland repealed a similar ban last June.

“Today, 35 years later, the situation is different. As NATO members, we have the right, the duty, and the desire to be full and equal members of NATO. The primary means of deterrence is nuclear deterrence,” said Juozas Olekas, the speaker of Lithuania’s parliament.

The Financial Times previously reported that the U.S. had discussed deploying nuclear warheads to countries on NATO’s eastern flank. U.S. nuclear weapons are currently stored on military bases in the U.K., Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands.

July 7, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

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