Are Putin’s nuclear threats really likely to lead to Armageddon?
The realities underlying the menacing vocabulary are a grey area – it is far from certain that Putin would be prepared to use nuclear weapons
Guardian, by Julian Borger in Washington, Sat 8 Oct 2022
The past week has seen a rapid escalation in nuclear rhetoric, beginning with Vladimir Putin’s threat to use “all forces and means” to defend newly seized territory in Ukraine and ending with Joe Biden’s warning of “Armageddon” if Russia crosses the nuclear Rubicon.
However, the realities underlying the menacing vocabulary are a far greyer area than the bluster suggests. It is far from certain that Putin would be prepared to be the first leader to use nuclear weapons in wartime since 1945, over his territorial ambitions in Ukraine. If his primary goal is to stay in power, that could be exactly the wrong way of going about it.
Even if he did issue the launch order, he has no guarantee it would be carried out. Nor can he be absolutely sure that the weapons and their delivery systems would work.
On the US side, despite the US president’s apocalyptic language at a private fundraiser on Thursday night, it is not at all inevitable that Washington would respond to Putin’s nuclear use with nuclear retaliation. Past wargaming suggests there would be vigorous debate within the administration to say the least.
Like US presidents, Putin is normally accompanied by an aide carrying a briefcase with codes used to authorise a nuclear launch. In the US it is called the football, in Russia it is the cheget. In the Russian system, the defence minister and the chief of the general staff have their own chegets but it is believed that Putin can order a launch without them.
However, the cheget is relevant for the strategic nuclear forces, the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) launched from land or sea, or long-range bombers. Because they need to be launched within minutes in case of enemy attack, the warheads need to be deployed, mounted on the delivery systems.
Any nuclear use in Ukraine would be likely to involve non-strategic, or tactical, weapons with shorter-range delivery systems, and which are usually (but not necessarily) less powerful than strategic arms, though on average they are many times more powerful that the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.
The US only has one kind of tactical weapon, the B61 gravity bomb, of which there are about a hundred in Europe and a similar number in the US, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
FAS estimates Russia has 2,000 tactical weapons, in very many shapes and sizes for use on land, sea and air. The weapons are not deployed on missiles or aircraft, but kept in bunkers in storage sites dotted around Russia. There are 12 national storage sites, known in Russian military parlance as “Object S”, one of which is in Belgorod, right on the Ukrainian border.
There are also 34 “base-level” sites, closer to the delivery systems. In a time of crisis, warheads would be moved from national to base-level sites – and up to now western intelligence agencies say no such movement has been observed.
Any such movement would be carried out by the 12th main directorate of the Russian armed forces, which has the job of storing and maintaining the warheads and then delivering them in specialised trains or trucks to base-level sites, or directly to the unit designated to launch them.
Pavel Baev, a military researcher who worked for the Soviet defence ministry, said that Putin cannot count on these weapons actually working.
“Most of these warheads stored there are very old,” Baev, now a professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said. “Without testing it’s really hard to say how suitable they are because many of them are past their expiration date.”
Baev added that it was also far from clear that the Russian can successfully pair old warheads with the much newer delivery systems that would have to be used, possibly 9K720 Iskander or Kinzhal hypersonic missiles……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The key question is more likely to be whether the US and its allies should respond with devastating conventional firepower, as Poland’s foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, and the former CIA director David Petraeus have suggested. But that would transform the war into one between Russia and Nato, in which escalation to a nuclear exchange could become hard to stop.
According to Eric Schlosser, the author of a book about the nuclear establishment, Command and Control, the Pentagon’s Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) conducted another war game in 2019 focused on Russian nuclear use in Ukraine. That wargame appears to have been updated, suggesting it is in constant use. The results in 2019 are top secret, but as Schlosser wrote in the Atlantic, one of the participants told him: “There were no happy outcomes.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/07/biden-putin-nuclear-threats-tactical-strike-us-response-analysis
Liz Truss and Emmanuel Macron get together on promoting nuclear power, especially Sizewell C
Sizewell C nuclear plant between Aldeburgh and Southwold will see joint
support from Liz Truss and Emmanuel Macron. Liz Truss and Emmanuel Macron
have agreed joint support for Sizewell C nuclear power plant. The pair
pledged to work closer on nuclear power and declared their cooperation for
the project, which is to be developed by French company EDF and will see
the plant built on the Suffolk coast between Aldeburgh and Southwold.
Suffolk News 7th Oct 2022
The UK prime minister and France’s president have confirmed joint support
for Sizewell C nuclear power plant. Liz Truss and Emmanuel Macron issued a
joint statement in which they said they were keen to advance cooperation,
on energy in particular. They pledged “full support” for the station set
for Suffolk’s coast, to be developed by French energy company EDF. The
leaders said they expected the “relevant bodies to finalise arrangements in
the coming month”.
BBC 6th Oct 2022
Joe Biden warned of nuclear ‘Armageddon’ amid Russia’s threats. The White House isn’t so sure
The US president recently made unusually direct comments about the dangers of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons. But the White House says they didn’t reflect new intelligence.
The United States sees no sign of Russian preparations to use a nuclear weapon in the near future, the White House said Friday after President Joe Biden warned that the world risks “Armageddon.”
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture, nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing imminently to use nuclear weapons,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Asked if Mr Biden’s alarming comment —
made late Thursday while criticising Russian President Vladimir Putin
— reflected new intelligence, she said “no.”…………………………………….. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/joe-biden-warned-of-nuclear-armageddon-amid-russias-threats-the-white-house-isnt-so-sure/1up40bgek
Russia’s €200m nuclear exports untouched by EU sanctions
euobserver, By INVESTIGATE EUROPE, BRUSSELS, 8 October 22,
“Russian nuclear terror requires a stronger response from the international community [including] sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry and nuclear fuel.” Those were the words Ukraine’s president Volodomyr Zelensky tweeted in August, after the shelling of a nuclear power plant in the country.
Since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the European Union has passed multiple sanctions packages aimed at hurting the Russian economy and reducing its ability to finance the war. Sanctions have included personalities, products of all kinds, and of course, fossil fuels.
But so far, nuclear sanctions were always left out.
On Wednesday 28 September, history repeated itself again. The European Commission proposed another sanction package against Russia, the eighth since the beginning of the invasion. It includes additional trade restrictions and an oil price cap for third countries. But still nothing on nuclear cooperation with Russia and imports of Russian uranium, even if many called for it.……………………..
Europe’s dependency
The reason for this resistance can be explained in one word: dependence. So far, an import ban on uranium or other sanctions on the Russian nuclear energy sector has only been discussed in EU circles, but never formally proposed.
“The European Commission never proposed it because the impact would be stronger for some Eastern member states, that are heavily-dependent on Russian infrastructure and technologies, than for Russia itself,” one diplomatic source told Investigate Europe…………………….
In economic terms, the EU countries paid around €210m for raw uranium imports from Russia in 2021 and another €245m from Kazakhstan, where the uranium mining is controlled by Russian state-owned company Rosatom.
Raw uranium imports from Russia to EU utilities were 2,358 tonnes last year, almost 20 percent of all EU imports. Only Niger (24.3 percent) and Kazakhstan (23.0 percent) were bigger uranium trade partners, according to the 2021 annual report from the EU body, Euratom Supply Agency (ESA)………
France is the EU nation most reliant on nuclear energy…
Europe works closely with Russia for its nuclear energy production……..
The role of France
Many governments, first and foremost the French, have pushed for Germany to break their dependence on Russian natural gas. But its own dependency on Russian uranium is shrouded in silence.
France imports on average around 20 percent of the needed raw uranium from Kazakhstan, where the uranium mining is controlled by Rosatom, according to Le Monde.
Green MEP Michèle Rivasi, a strong opponent of nuclear energy, exemplifies the French-Russian nuclear connection by citing Henri Proglio, the former CEO of EDF, the French semi-public main electricity company, who sits on the international advisory board of Rosatom.
“If Macron had asked Proglio to resign, he would have done so of course,” she told Investigate Europe. French dependence is not only on uranium imports, but also on nuclear waste treatment and many other activities, she said.
MEP Christophe Grudler, of the Renew Europe party, supports the exclusion of nuclear activity from the EU sanctions. In his view, one cannot impose sanctions against Russian gas (there is no embargo planned yet, unlike for crude oil) and then against Russian uranium. Unless we want a general blackout, he says.
“We must not forget that the nuclear business is not only about the power plant,” Grudler told Investigate Europe. “It is also about steam turbines. One of the world’s leading players, if not the leading one, is the French technology [company] Arabelle. However, we should not forget that two thirds of the turbines are sold… to Rosatom.”
According to some French media reports at the start of the year, Rosatom was set to acquire a 20 percent stake in GEAST, the manufacturer of the Arabelle turbine for nuclear power plants………………………………………..
In the meantime, Europe will continue to feed Russia’s finances — while adopting sanctions to drain the Kremlin’s treasury. https://euobserver.com/world/156226
Poland suggests hosting US nuclear weapons- ‘nuclear sharing’
Poland suggests hosting US nuclear weapons amid growing fears of Putin’s threats, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/05/poland-us-nuclear-wars-russia-putin-ukraine Julian Borger in Washington, 6 Oct 22, Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, in September. He said there was ‘a potential opportunity’ for Poland to take part in ‘nuclear sharing’.
Poland says it has asked to have US nuclear weapons based on its territory, amid growing fears that Vladimir Putin could resort to using nuclear arms in Ukraine to stave off a rout of his invading army.
The request from the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, is widely seen as symbolic, as moving nuclear warheads closer to Russia would make them more vulnerable and less militarily useful, according to experts. Furthermore, the White House has said it had not received such a request.
“We’re not aware of this issue being raised and would refer you to the government of Poland,” a US official said.
Duda’s announcement appears to be the latest example of nuclear signalling as the US and its allies seek to deter Putin from the first nuclear use in battle since 1945, while preparing potential responses if deterrence fails that would have maximum punitive impact while containing the risk of escalation to all-out nuclear war.
NATO ‘not obliged’ to assist Ukraine — German ambassador
Rt.com 2 Oct 22, Berlin’s envoy to the military bloc clarifies that NATO won’t actively fight for a non-member state.
Germany’s permanent representative to NATO has explained that the US-led bloc is not obliged to offer direct military assistance to Ukraine. Ruediger Koenig added that its members want to avoid a major war.
He was speaking to Dein Spiegel, the youth version of Der Spiegel magazine, which published the interview on Saturday.
The Ukraine conflict dominated much of the article, with Koenig describing Russia’s decision to launch its offensive against its neighbor in late February as a watershed event…….
Germany’s representative to NATO stressed that the military alliance as a whole, however, has no legal obligation to help Kiev repel Moscow’s attack as Ukraine is not a member state. This means that Article 5 of NATO’s treaty cannot be activated, the official explained. Under it, an attack on one ally is considered to be an attack against the whole of NATO, with all member states having to stick up for the targeted nation.
According to Koenig, the military bloc is anxious to avoid getting actively involved in the conflict at all costs because “this would mean a very big war.”
Such a scenario, which would see 30 more nations join the fray, is something “nobody wants,” the diplomat noted…………..
He concluded that the prospect of peace is rather slim as Ukraine and Russia’s positions seem to be irreconcilable. Koenig clarified that Ukraine “rightly” demands that Moscow cede all former Ukrainian regions in the south and east of the country that recently voted to join Russia, as well as Crimea, which joined the country in 2014. The official pointed out that the Kremlin, however, is unlikely to agree to such terms. https://www.rt.com/news/563942-germany-nato-envoy-ukraine-kids/
Zelensky pledges never to talk to Putin
Rt.com 2 Oct 22
Ukraine will not negotiate with Moscow until Putin is replaced as president, Zelensky and his cabinet said
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky refuses to negotiate a peace settlement as long as Vladimir Putin remains president of Russia. He made this claim in a post on his official Telegram channel on Friday.
………….. “We are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but … with another president of Russia,” he wrote. Unlike the majority of his Telegram posts, this one was written only in Ukrainian, without an accompanying English translation.
Zelensky has repeatedly rejected overtures of peace from Moscow, most recently turning down Putin’s offer on Friday to resume negotiations. What made the offer a non-starter for Kiev is that Putin refused to relinquish the regions that voted this week to join Russia…..
Zelensky also confirmed that Ukraine had submitted an accelerated application to join NATO on Friday, something he previously admitted was probably never going to happen. While Western media described the move as “more symbolic than practical,” the Ukrainian president argued that Sweden and Finland were able to apply on an accelerated basis even without a Membership Action Plan and it was thus only “fair” that Ukraine do the same.
De facto, we have already completed our path to NATO,” he said in another Telegram post. “De facto, we have already proven interoperability with the Alliance’s standards … We trust each other, we help each other and we protect each other.”
Zelensky has previously acknowledged Ukraine might struggle to secure the consent of all 30 NATO member nations…………………………….
 |
https://www.rt.com/russia/563840-zelensky-negotiations-putin-russia/
‘Not wise’ to let Ukraine join NATO – Kissinger
https://www.rt.com/news/563858-kissinger-ukraine-nato-russia/ 1 Oct 22, Russia regarded its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe as a “safety belt,” the former US secretary of state said.
Washington’s attempts to incorporate Ukraine into NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union were not prudent, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said on Friday.
Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, a non-partisan US think tank, the 99-year-old veteran diplomat argued that Washington tried to indiscriminately include all former members of the Soviet bloc under its umbrella after the Berlin wall fell, and that the “whole region between the center of Europe and Russian border became open to restructure.”
“From the Russian point of view, the United States then attempted to integrate this whole region, without exception, into an American-led strategic system,” he said, adding that this development basically removed Russia’s historic “safety belt.”
Kissinger thus stressed that “it was not a wise American policy to attempt to include Ukraine into NATO.”
He does not believe, however, that this justifies attempts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to re-incorporate Ukraine into Moscow’s sphere of influence by a “surprise attack.”
Kissinger said he does not know if it is possible to make peace with the Russian leader, but stressed that the West “must seek an opportunity for an arrangement that guarantees Ukrainian freedom” and keeps the country part of the European system.
Moreover, Kissinger opined that in a way, Russia has “already lost the war” because its capacity to threaten Europe with conventional attacks, which it had enjoyed for decades or even centuries, “has now been demonstrably overcome.”
Despite that, the former secretary of state signaled that sooner or later, the West and Russia must engage in dialogue. “Some dialogue, maybe on an unofficial level, maybe in an exploratory way is very important,” he reiterated, adding that “in the nuclear environment” such an outcome is preferable to a “battlefield decision.”
In early August, Kissinger warned that the US had found itself “at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created,” arguing that Washington has rejected traditional diplomacy, as it has been “seeking to convert or condemn their interlocutors rather than to penetrate their thinking.”
Washington split over Ukraine’s NATO bid – Politico
https://www.rt.com/news/563851-washington-split-ukraine-nato/ 2 Oct 22,
Zelensky’s unexpected demand to fast-track membership talks has reportedly been met with a mixed reaction
Ukraine’s bid for accelerated accession to NATO caught Washington off-guard, driving a wedge between a number of US lawmakers, Politico reported on Friday.
When the outlet asked US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if she supports Kiev’s demand to join NATO, she stopped short of unequivocally endorsing the move, saying the US is “very committed to democracy in Ukraine.”
“Let’s win this war. But I would be for them having a security guarantee,” she told Politico.
Democratic Party colleague Representative Mike Quigley (D- Illinois) said that Washington should support Ukraine’s NATO bid. “Ukraine’s fight is the reason we formed NATO in the first place,” he told Politico, adding that since WWII, the US has recognized “that an authoritarian regime cannot be allowed to wipe out a democratic country.”
On Friday, following the start of the formal accession of four former Ukrainian regions to Russia, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky demanded that the procedure for joining NATO be fast-tracked. This apparently came as a surprise to the Biden administration, according to two US officials cited by the outlet.
Many Western officials fear that if Kiev becomes a full-fledged member of the bloc, it would not only provoke Russia, but would also draw Washington and Moscow into a direct war, as NATO’s charter stipulates that an attack on one member is considered an attack against the entire alliance. The only instance in which this principle has been applied came after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the US.
On Friday, President Vladimir Putin signed treaties on the inclusion of the two Donbass republics, as well as the two southern Ukrainian regions which had declared independence, into the Russian Federation. All four territories held referendums from September 23 to 27, in which the people voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining Russia.
Western leaders have condemned Moscow’s latest moves. US President Joe Biden has vowed to impose further sanctions on Russia and continue to supply Kiev with military aid.
NATO in the horns of a dilemma after former Ukrainian regions vote to join Russia
NATO, having overcommitted to Ukraine, now finds itself “on the horns of a dilemma” – if it continues to provide massive material and financial support to Ukraine, it will, in effect, become a direct party to the conflict, something no one in the bloc wants. However, if it backs away from supporting Ukraine, the various Western political leaders and institutions which have made support for Kiev a sacred obligation will be seen as going back on their word.
How NATO opts to proceed has yet to be manifest, but indications are that it will not be in a manner which continues to double down on supporting Ukraine no matter what
https://www.rt.com/russia/563788-referendums-ukraine-nato-dilemma/–-1 Oct 22,
Moscow is flipping the bloc’s script by moving to absorb Kiev’s lost lands, thus switching the fight to its own turf.
By infusing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military aid into Ukraine, NATO produced a “game-changing” dynamic designed to throw Russia off balance. By undertaking the referendums in Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk, Russia changed the game altogether.
The ancient Greeks spoke of lemma as representing a logical premise, a matter taken for granted. This contrasted with a dilemma, or “dual premise”, where one would be presented with an either/or proposition. The Romans furthered this notion, referring to a “double premise” as argumentum cornutum, of the “horned argument,” because by answering one argument, an individual would be impaled by the logic of the second. Thus are the ancient roots of the modern idiom, “on the horns of a dilemma.”
This is the ultimate objective of maneuver warfare, for example: to position your forces in such a manner as to present the enemy with no good option – should they react to one pressing threat, they would find themselves overwhelmed by the other.
The Russian military operation that has been underway in Ukraine for more than seven months now has provided ample examples of the military forces of both sides being confronted with a situation that compelled them to alter their preferred course of action; the Russian “diversion” against Kiev early on in the SMO prevented the Ukrainians from reinforcing their forces in eastern Ukraine, and the recently concluded Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkov compelled a hasty Russian withdrawal from a significant swath of previously occupied Ukrainian territory.
Both examples cited presented one side with a lemma, or a single problem, which needed to be addressed. But neither was able to put its opponent “on the horns of a dilemma,” forcing a response which would result in impalement regardless of the option chosen. The reason for this is simple – very rarely will competent military commanders allow themselves to be presented with a military problem for which there is no viable response. War, it seems, is hard work, and dilemmas don’t fall from trees.
Or do they? Ever since Boris Johnston flew to Kiev in April to convince Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to pull out of peace talks then ongoing with Russia in the Turkish city of Istanbul, NATO has embarked on a program designed to provide Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in military and financial assistance, including the transfer of modern heavy weapons and the use of facilities on Western soil where tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops could be trained and organized without fear of Russian intervention.
The purpose behind the NATO infusion of weaponry into Ukraine was straightforward – to empower Ukraine to not only lengthen the conflict, but also to undertake offensive military operations designed to evict Russia from what Kiev and its backers consider occupied Ukrainian territory, including the Donbass and Crimea. The counteroffensive in Kharkov in early September underscored the serious consequences of NATO’s actions – even though, given the massive loss of life and material suffered by the attacking Ukrainian forces, made the Kharkov victory Pyrrhic in nature, it was a Ukrainian victory, and one which compelled a Russian retreat.
By transforming the Ukrainian army into a NATO army which was manned by Ukrainians, the US-led bloc had, in fact, changed the nature of the game from a straightforward Russia-versus-Ukraine “special military operation” into a “Russia-versus-the collective West” struggle where the military resources originally allocated by Moscow to the fight were now insufficient to the task.
Russia, however, was not taking the game-changing actions of NATO standing still. Responding to the new reality on the ground in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin opted not to simply up the ante in this new NATO-driven game of increasing military power but change the game altogether. Not only did he order the partial mobilization of some 300,000 Russian reservists to reinforce the troops currently committed to the SMO, Putin also approved referendums in the four territories where Russian forces are presently fighting – Kherson and Zaporozhye (formerly occupied Ukrainian regions), and Donetsk and Lugansk (former regions of Ukraine, de-facto independent since 2014). These referendums asked the citizens of these four territories one simple question: do you wish to become part of Russia?
After five days of voting, the results from all four territories were clear – by an overwhelming majority, the participants in the referendums approved the proposition. Shortly thereafter, they were incorporated into the Russian Federation. What was once Ukraine has now become Mother Russia
Russia didn’t just change the rules of the game – it changed the game itself. Instead of Ukrainian forces fighting Russian forces on the territory of Ukraine, any future combat carried out by Ukraine against Russian forces would represent an attack on the Russian homeland itself.
Where does this leave NATO? The bloc’s leadership has made it clear from day one that it is not seeking direct confrontation with Russia. While its members have poured in tens of billions of dollars of material into Ukraine to help reconstitute its military, and provided critical logistics, intelligence, and communications support to Ukraine, it has repeatedly and insistently stated that it has no desire to fight a war with Russia directly and has made it clear that it would rather have the Ukrainians serve as a de facto NATO proxy in resisting Moscow.
NATO has gone “all in” both economically and politically when it comes to supporting Ukraine, to the extent that some of its members, having stripped their respective military structures of equipment and material, have nothing left to give. Despite this, European political and economic elites continue to articulate their strong support for Ukraine going forward.
This support, however, was predicated on the fundamental assumption that by providing Ukraine with this massive level of support, NATO would not get directly involved in a conflict with Moscow. But Russia, by transforming the battleground from one being fought on Ukrainian soil to one where it’s now defending its own land, has flipped the script.
NATO, having overcommitted to Ukraine, now finds itself “on the horns of a dilemma” – if it continues to provide massive material and financial support to Ukraine, it will, in effect, become a direct party to the conflict, something no one in the bloc wants. However, if it backs away from supporting Ukraine, the various Western political leaders and institutions which have made support for Kiev a sacred obligation will be seen as going back on their word.
How NATO opts to proceed has yet to be manifest, but indications are that it will not be in a manner which continues to double down on supporting Ukraine no matter what. Secretary General Stoltenberg’s tepid speech condemning Russia while showing no enthusiasm for Zelensky’s “accelerated application” for membership is indicative of the less-than-resolute nature of its support for Kiev.
NATO now will find its role diminished by the consequences of the Russian mobilization and referendums. Years from now, when the history of the conflict is finally written, the decision by President Putin to simultaneously mobilize the Russian reserves while absorbing the territory of southern and eastern Ukraine into the Russian Federation will serve as one of the premier modern-history examples of putting an adversary “on the horns of a dilemma.” The effective neutering of NATO by this action will more than likely be seen as a turning point in the conflict, one which sealed the fate of Ukraine in the face of an inevitable Russian victory.
“End War in Ukraine” Say 66 Nations at UN General Assembly
Common Dreams, BY MEDEA BENJAMIN – NICOLAS J. S. DAVIES, 30 Sept 22,
We have spent much of the past week reading and listening to speeches by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York. Most of them condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of the UN Charter and a serious setback for the peaceful world order that is the UN’s founding and defining principle.
But what has not been reported in the United States is that leaders from 66 countries, mostly from the Global South, also used their General Assembly speeches to call urgently for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine through peaceful negotiations, as the UN Charter requires. We have compiled excerpts from the speeches of all 66 countries to show the breadth and depth of their appeals, and we highlight a few of them here.
African leaders echoed one of the first speakers, Macky Sall, the president of Senegal, who also spoke in his capacity as the current chairman of the African Union when he said, “We call for de-escalation and a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, as well as for a negotiated solution, to avoid the catastrophic risk of a potentially global conflict.”
The 66 nations that called for peace in Ukraine make up more than a third of the countries in the world, and they represent most of the Earth’s population, including India, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil and Mexico.
While NATO and EU countries have rejected peace negotiations, and U.S. and U.K. leaders have actively undermined them, the leaders of five European countries – Hungary, Malta, Portugal, San Marino and the Vatican – joined the calls for peace at the General Assembly.
The peace caucus also includes many of the small countries that have the most to lose from the breakdown of the UN system that recent wars in Ukraine and the Greater Middle East represent, and who have the most to gain by strengthening the UN and enforcing the UN Charter to protect the weak and restrain the powerful.
Philip Pierre, the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, a small island state in the Caribbean, told the General Assembly,
“Articles 2 and 33 of the UN Charter are unambiguous in binding Member States to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state and to negotiate and settle all international disputes by peaceful means.…We therefore call upon all parties involved to immediately end the conflict in Ukraine, by undertaking immediate negotiations to permanently settle all disputes in accordance with the principles of the United Nations.”
Global South leaders lamented the failure of the UN system, not just in the war in Ukraine but throughout decades of war and economic coercion by the United States and its allies. President Jose Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste directly challenged the West’s double standards, telling Western countries,
“They should pause for a moment to reflect on the glaring contrast in their response to the wars elsewhere where women and children have died by the thousands from wars and starvation. The response to our beloved Secretary-General’s cries for help in these situations have not met with equal compassion. As countries in the Global South, we see double standards. Our public opinion does not see the Ukraine war the same way it is seen in the North.”
Many leaders called urgently for an end to the war in Ukraine before it escalates into a nuclear war that would kill billions of people and end human civilization as we know it. The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, warned,
“…the war in Ukraine not only undermines the nuclear non-proliferation regime, but also presents us with the danger of nuclear devastation, either through escalation or accident. … To avoid a nuclear disaster, it is vital that there be serious engagement to find a peaceful outcome to the conflict.”
Others described the economic impacts already depriving their people of food and basic necessities, and called on all sides, including Ukraine’s Western backers, to return to the negotiating table before the war’s impacts escalate into multiple humanitarian disasters across the Global South…………………………………………………
At the end of the debate on September 26, Csaba Korosi, the president of the General Assembly, acknowledged in his closing statement that ending the war in Ukraine was one of the main messages “reverberating through the Hall” at this year’s General Assembly.
You can read here Korosi’s closing statement and all the calls for peace he was referring to.
And if you want to learn more about the “legions working together in solidarity… to impose the unconditional option of peace on the war lobbies,” as Jean-Claude Gakosso said, you can find out more at https://www.peaceinukraine.org/. https://qoshe.com/common-dreams/medea-benjamin/-end-war-in-ukraine-say-66-nations-at-un-general-assembly/147104931
America’s nuclear industry remains dependent on Russia for enriched uranium fuel
Russia’s dominance in the global nuclear fuel market presents another
massive challenge for Washington, especially the liberal hawks in the Biden
administration, who are trying to wean Western countries off Russian energy
supplies. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said President Biden is
redoubling efforts to break the US reliance on Russian nuclear fuel,
indicating domestic uranium-enrichment capacity could be increased with
upcoming key legislation.
Oil Price 1st Oct 2022
Russia’s oil and gas sanctioned, – but its profitable nuclear trade allowed to roll on!
Russia’s nuclear trade with Europe flows despite Ukraine war. European
Union nations are continuing to import and export nuclear fuel that is not
under EU sanctions on Russia. While the European Union has agreed to
curtail its use of Russian oil and gas, its member nations continue to
import and export nuclear fuel that is not under EU sanctions — to the
chagrin of the Ukrainian government and environmental activists.
A cargo ship carrying uranium that departed from the French port of Dunkirk
traveled across the North Sea on Thursday, heading toward the Russian
Baltic port of Ust-Luga. It was the third time in just over a month that
the Panama-flagged Mikhail Dudin ship docked in Dunkirk to transport
uranium from or to Russia.
Environmental group Greenpeace France denounced
the ongoing shipments and called for stopping all trade in nuclear fuel,
which it said was “financing the war in Ukraine, extending (Europe’s)
energy dependence and delaying the transition to renewable energy.” The
EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, did not propose targeting
Russia’s nuclear sector in its latest sanctions package presented
Wednesday.
ABC News 29th Sept 2022
Uncle Sam’s Long Trail of Wreckage
the Biden administration opted to use Ukraine in a Western proxy war against Russia.
Washington and London appear to have sabotaged a possible peace accord between Moscow and Kiev.
The Biden administration is risking nuclear war with Russia to assist a corrupt, authoritarian regime in a country of little importance to the United States.
Until the early 1990s, Ukraine wasn’t even an independent country, much less a U.S. vital interest.
Very few policymakers even concede that Washington’s overseas military adventures often have not turned out as planned.
The American Conservative, Ted Galen Carpenter, Sep 28, 2022, The leaders and most of the news media in the U.S. seem to believe that Washington’s foreign policy over the past several decades has been a success and benefitted both the United States and the world. That assumption wasn’t really true even during the Cold War, although that confrontation eventually resulted in the peaceful demise of America’s nasty totalitarian adversary. There was plenty of collateral damage along the way, with the suffering caused by Washington’s conduct in Vietnam and Afghanistan being the most glaring examples.
The performance of U.S. leaders after the Cold War has been even worse. An array of disruptive, bloody tragedies—most notably those in the Balkans, Afghanistan (again), Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen—mark Uncle Sam’s global trail of wreckage. The Biden administration’s decision to use Ukraine as a pawn in Washington’s power struggle with Russia is fast becoming the latest example.
Very few policymakers even concede that Washington’s overseas military adventures often have not turned out as planned. The news media, which is supposed to serve as the public’s watchdog, have routinely ignored or excused America’s foreign-policy disasters. Instead, when one intervention fails, they simply move on to lobby for the next crusade pushed by U.S. leaders. Consider how few news accounts now deal with the ongoing violence and chaos in places such as Libya, Syria, and Yemen, even though Washington was a major contributor to all of those tragedies.
Paul Poast, a scholar with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, aptly describes the conflict in Syria as America’s “forgotten war.” “That the war in Syria has become the “forgotten war,” he observes, “points to a more disturbing trend in U.S. foreign policy: The United States is so engaged in wars and interventions around the world that a conflict involving the U.S. military that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians does not even register with the American public anymore.”………………………………………
The turmoil in Iraq is less severe, but is still damaging the country. Political disputes and mass demonstrations against the current government regularly surface in Iraq. Pro-Iranian militias continue to play a prominent role in the country’s government, and the three-way split among Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Kurds is becoming ever more contentious. Political violence among rival factions shows no signs of subsiding, nor does public resentment against the presence of U.S. troops. Washington so lacks trust in its “ally” that officials once threatened to seize the country’s bank reserves if Iraqi leaders continued to press for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
The level of human tragedy in Libya and Yemen is horrifying. Washington and its NATO allies bear almost exclusive responsibility for the situation in Libya………………………
The latest application of Washington’s meddlesome policy is in Ukraine. U.S. leaders ignored repeated Russian warnings that making Ukraine a NATO member or even an unofficial NATO military asset would cross a line that threatened Russia’s security. When Moscow finally responded to the provocations with an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration opted to use Ukraine in a Western proxy war against Russia.
The conflict has already done enormous damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure and taken thousands of lives. Worse, Washington and London appear to have sabotaged a possible peace accord between Moscow and Kiev.
The U.S. foreign-policy record over the past three decades could hardly be worse. It is crucial not to let policymakers and their media mouthpieces get away with convenient collective amnesia and imitations of Pontius Pilate. Instead, they need to be held fully accountable for their blunders and deception.
Future U.S. policymakers also need to avoid repeating the faulty performance of their predecessors. To do so, they must make three significant changes to U.S. foreign policy.
First, Washington should utterly renounce nation-building. Trying to remake alien societies by force and impose Western political, economic, and social values is the essence of folly.
Even when the United States has not yet been drawn into a new war to enforce crumbling nation-building goals, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, such armed social experiments are an exercise in futility and frustration. Worse, nation-building missions frequently worsen conditions in the targeted country, and the predictable failure of U.S. objectives even can lead to Washington’s outright humiliation. The debacle in Afghanistan is a stark reminder of that danger.
Second, the United States must avoid the temptation to engage in regime-change wars. Such offensives often are a prelude to disastrous nation-building ventures. That was the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Those wars not only made matters worse for the populations in the three countries, but worsened the security situation for neighboring states and even the United States. In both Iraq and Libya, U.S. actions toppled secular dictators, paving the way for chaos that strengthened the position of Islamic jihadists. Granted, the secular dictators were brutal and sometimes caused problems for the United States, but Washington’s “solution” clearly made matters worse, not better.
Third, U.S. leaders must do a much better job of distinguishing vital national interests from secondary or peripheral ones. Washington’s current policy of using Ukraine as a proxy for a war against Russia is a troubling example of the failure to make such basic distinctions. The Biden administration is risking nuclear war with Russia to assist a corrupt, authoritarian regime in a country of little importance to the United States.
Until the early 1990s, Ukraine wasn’t even an independent country, much less a U.S. vital interest. To accept the risks the Biden administration is incurring is irresponsible and violates the U.S. government’s responsibility to the American people.
Unless these policy changes are made, it is just a matter of time until a new set of officials repeat the disastrous blunders of their predecessors. If they do, the consequences to America and the world will be equally damaging. Indeed, the Ukraine adventure reveals that the consequences could be even worse than the wreckage already wrought by Uncle Sam. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/uncle-sams-long-trail-of-wreckage/
Sanctions against Russian exports – but that doesn’t apply to NUCLEAR EXPORTS, (while they bring in funding for Russia’s war!)
ED note. When will they all wake up? The nuclear industry is essential for the nuclear weapons so beloved by the governments that have them.
Keeping the nuclear industry going is essential for the wealth, power and influence of the global nuclear lobby, and the future of all their crackpot super-costly ‘advanced’ nuclear gimmicks.
Apparently we can all accept cutting back gas, oil, food ……. but must not let anyone curtail that sacred cow – the nuclear industry
Russia’s nuclear trade with Europe flows despite Ukraine war, By SYLVIE CORBET, September 30, 2022,
PARIS (AP) — While the European Union has agreed to curtail its use of Russian oil and gas, its member nations continue to import and export nuclear fuel that is not under EU sanctions — to the chagrin of the Ukrainian government and environmental activists.
A cargo ship carrying uranium that departed from the French port of Dunkirk traveled across the North Sea on Thursday, heading toward the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga. It was the third time in just over a month that the Panama-flagged Mikhail Dudin ship docked in Dunkirk to transport uranium from or to Russia.
Environmental group Greenpeace France denounced the ongoing shipments and called for stopping all trade in nuclear fuel, which it said was “financing the war in Ukraine, extending (Europe’s) energy dependence and delaying the transition to renewable energy.”
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, did not propose targeting Russia’s nuclear sector in its latest sanctions package presented Wednesday.
“France ensures strict compliance by economic players with all the European sanctions adopted against Russia. Civil nuclear power is not affected by these sanctions,” the French Foreign Affairs Ministry told the Associated Press.
The ministry that EU nations “did not consider this to be a relevant area for ending Russian aggression against Ukraine.”
Ukraine, meanwhile, is pushing for European sanctions in that area. The Ukrainian president’s economic adviser, Oleg Ustenko, said Wednesday that “in terms of uranium, we think it’s extremely important to impose sanctions, not only on Russian oil.”
“Oil, gas, uranium and coal, all this should be banned. Because they are using this money in order to finance this war,” Ustenko said.
According to Greenpeace France, reprocessed uranium meant to be transported to Russia were loaded onto the Mikhail Dudin on Wednesday. Pauline Boyer, an energy campaigner at Greenpeace France, said the ship’s repeated trips between Russia and France show “the extent to which the French nuclear industry is trapped in its dependence on Russia.”
French authorities have repeatedly said the country does not depend on Russia to supply the nuclear power plants that provide 67% of its electricity — more than any other nation………………………………………..
The Lingen plant is operated by Framatome, which is majority-owned by French utility giant EDF. It is supplying nuclear fuel to plants in France, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, Spain, Sweden and Finland.
Faced with activists’ protests, the German government took a critical view toward the uranium shipment but said it couldn’t stop the fuel from being processed because it isn’t covered by the EU’s war-related sanctions on Russia.
At the end of last month, enriched uranium unloaded from the Mikhail Dudin in Dunkirk was destined for the Rhone valley in southern France, which is home to major sites of the French civil nuclear industry, according to Greenpeace France.
The French nuclear sector has a series of contracts with Russian state-controlled energy giant Rosatom, including some to import enriched uranium destined for European nuclear power plants and to export reprocessed uranium to Russia. Rosatom is one of the world’s biggest actors in the nuclear energy market.
Multinational company Orano, headquartered in France, has a contract with Rosatom to buy reprocessed uranium to convert it into nuclear fuel at its Seversk plant, in Siberia, and ultimately use it in reactors to produce energy.
The U.S. power industry also imports uranium from Russia to feed its nuclear plants.
AP recently tracked millions of dollars worth of shipments of radioactive uranium hexafluoride from Russian state-owned Tenex JSC, the world’s largest exporter of initial nuclear fuel cycle products, to Westinghouse Electric Co. in South Carolina. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-france-global-trade-only-on-ap-business-c521f2248c823f69f0a677735a78e89d
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- May 2026 (126)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 