nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Despite Zelensky’s claims, there’s no evidence that Russia has rigged Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya plant with explosives, nuclear watchdog says

Business Insider, Charles R. Davis , Jul 8, 2023

  • The IAEA said Friday there’s no sign Russia plans to destroy the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant.
  • Inspectors “have not seen any mines or explosives,” according to the head of the nuclear watchdog.
  • However, the IAEA said its experts have not been provided full access to the facility.

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said Friday that it has seen no evidence that Russia intends to blow up the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, a finding that comes after the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence walked back an earlier warning of impending disaster.

In a status report on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which Russian forces occupied soon after last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said inspectors were recently provided “some additional access” to the facility after Ukraine claimed it had been rigged with bombs……………………………………..

Russia has repeatedly denied it has any intention of causing a nuclear disaster. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov this week argued that the real threat is Ukrainian “sabotage.”….  https://www.businessinsider.com/no-sign-russia-has-mined-zaporizhzhya-plant-nuclear-watchdog-says-2023-7

July 8, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Scenario for a War in Eastern Ukraine

John Stanton,  Sri Lanka Guardian•February 05, 2022

 The United States Views Russians Just as the Nazi’s Did in World War II

by John Stanton

“There is a sense of open, almost joyful viciousness in all this pro-war, anti-Russian sentiment on opinion pages and television broadcasts. It is certainly racist and demeaning in tone. Such is the first step in convincing the public that the “transgressor” is equivalent to a retrovirus.”John Stanton, Dissident Voice, 2015

Vietnam 2.0 is in the making in Ukraine. The US civil-military establishment, Republicans and Democrats alike, want a shooting war with Russia, even though it was the US that caused the carnage in Ukraine, not the Russians. Yet, that inconvenient reality has been nullified by the US propaganda campaign which, of course, the Russians have responded to with their own.” John Stanton, Counterpunch, 2015

Preparing for War with Russia Since 1992

As President Joe Biden announced the transfer of 2000 US troops to Poland and Germany on February 3, 2022, and the movement of an additional 1000 troops from Western Europe to Romania, I shook my head and looked to the sky thinking, “the United States and its elites really want a war with Russia, both economic and military. US generals want to use tanks, missiles, and aircraft against a near-peer competitor. They can’t beat sandal wearing insurgents in Afghanistan, so they want to mix it up with the A-Team, i.e., Russia.”……………………

The Washington Post and New York Times and the major networks, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, FOX, et al, are salivating at the prospect of a Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine, specifically the Donbass, home to separatist republics in Luhansk and Donetsk. As I wrote in April 2014, “There is a sense of open, almost joyful viciousness in all this pro-war, anti-Russian sentiment on opinion pages and television broadcasts. It is certainly racist and demeaning in tone. Such is the first step in convincing the public that the “transgressor” is equivalent to a retrovirus.” John Stanton, Dissident Voice, 2014

NATO: Causing Trouble since 1949

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barak Obama, Donald Trump and now Joe Biden have pushed NATO expansion right up to Russia’s border. For example, Estonia and Latvia are NATO members. Estonia is 120 miles from St. Petersburg.NATO is purely a military alliance led by the USA. Its members serve simply military bases (some probably with tactical nuclear weapons) for US military forces and its many military contractors.

Is there any wonder that the President of Russia Vladimir Putin should be concerned?Are NAZI’s in the USA and NATO pushingthe expansion of NATO, the racial hatred of Russians, and seeking a hot war? It is revolting.

NATO: Causing Trouble since 1949

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barak Obama, Donald Trump and now Joe Biden have pushed NATO expansion right up to Russia’s border. For example, Estonia and Latvia are NATO members. Estonia is 120 miles from St. Petersburg.NATO is purely a military alliance led by the USA. Its members serve simply military bases (some probably with tactical nuclear weapons) for US military forces and its many military contractors.

Is there any wonder that the President of Russia Vladimir Putin should be concerned?Are NAZI’s in the USA and NATO pushing the expansion of NATO, the racial hatred of Russians, and seeking a hot war? It is revolting……………………………….

Attack Scenario, just a Guess: If Russia’s Hand is Forced by USA-NATO

Russian military forces fought in Ukraine during World War II against NAZI Germany. For example, the Battle of Kiev and The Battle of the Dnieper. There is an historical record for Russian military planners to refer to. The Battle of Grozny in Chechnya will weigh heavily on Russian military planners as the decide which communities to take control of………………………………………………..more http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2022/02/scenario-for-war-in-eastern-ukraine.html?m=1

July 8, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

U.S. Depleted Uranium to Make Ukraine War Dirtier

CounterPunch, BY JOHN LAFORGE, 30 June 23

The Biden administration is expected to supply Ukraine with highly controversial depleted-uranium munitions which are to be fired from the Abrams battle tanks the U.S. is sending to Kyiv, the Wall St. Journal reported June 13.

Any delivery of U.S. depleted uranium (DU) weapons to Ukraine would be in addition to the State Department’s Dec. 22, 2022 approval of the sale to Poland of as many as 112,000 heavy 120-millimeter DU shells, which was announced by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

The British Ministry of Defense announced last March 20 that it too would send depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine along with its Challenger battle tanks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded at the time charging that sending DU into Ukraine would mean the U.K. was “ready to violate international humanitarian law as in 1999 in Yugoslavia.” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65032671) The reference may be to the United Nations Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights which in 2002 labeled the use of DU “inhumane” and a violation of treaties like the Hague Conventions which expressly forbid any use of “poison or poisoned weapons.”

The Wall St. Journal’s understated sub-headline on June 13 warned: “The armor-piercing ammunition has raised concerns over health and environmental effects.” Indeed, between 1997 and 2004, USA Today, the Associated Press, New York Daily News, Life magazine, CNN, and others reported that studies were finding a significantly increased rate of birth abnormalities among children of U.S. Gulf War veterans and among Iraqi children born after 1991. (“DU in UKRAINE – John Pilger & Phil Miller,” Consortium News, May 11, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqlMrjMuFwI; “Tainted uranium, danger widely distributed,” USA Today, June 25, 2001)

The Journal’s article acknowledged that “The United Nations Environment Program said in a report last year that the [depleted uranium] metal’s ‘chemical toxicity’ presents the greatest potential danger, and ‘it can cause skin irritation, kidney failure, and increase the risks of cancer.’”……………..

If the shells are used in the Ukraine war, the soil, water, crops, and livestock of the territory being contested will likely be contaminated with uranium and the other radioactive materials that are in the armor-piercing munitions. This is because when DU smashes through tank armor, it becomes an aerosol of dust or gas-like particles that can be inhaled and carried long distances on the wind……………………………………………………………………………………………….

The U.S. Department of Energy admitted in January 2000 that the metal in DU shells is often contaminated with plutonium, neptunium, and americium, long-lived, highly radioactive isotopes, much more hazardous than DU, or uranium-238. (“Pentagon admits plutonium exposure: NATO shells used radioactive metals,” London, AP, The Capital Times, Feb. 3, 2001; New York Times, Feb. 14, 2001)

While the U.S. military repeatedly declares that its uranium weapons contain uranium-238, and that its DU shells “are less radioactive than natural uranium,” the United Nations Environment Program and others demonstrated that uranium shells used by the U.S. and the U.K. were contaminated with fission products including plutonium. (“DU at Home,” The Nation, April 9, 2001)

Government evidence of harm

* In 2002, the U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute found in a preliminary report that DU produces one-million times as much chromosome damage as would be predicted from its radioactivity alone, and that it causes a form of long-term “delayed reproductive death” of cells. The AFRR institute then canceled the funding of this research.

* In 1997, the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute reportedly found that, “In animal studies, embedded DU, unlike most metals, dissolves and spreads throughout the body depositing in organs like the spleen and the brain, and a pregnant female rat will pass DU along to a developing fetus.” The Army’s Office of the Surgeon General’s 1993 manual “Depleted Uranium Safety Training” says the expected effects of DU exposure include a possible increase of cancer (lung and bone) and kidney damage. It recommends that the Army “… convene a working group … to identify countermeasures against DU exposure.”

* In 1995, the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute reported, “The radiation dose to critical organs depends upon the amount of time that depleted uranium resides in the organs. When this value is known or estimated, cancer and hereditary risk estimates can be determined.” Depleted uranium has the potential to generate “significant medical consequences” if it enters the body, the AEPI found.

* In 1990, the Army’s Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command radiological task group said that depleted uranium is a “low level alpha radiation emitter … linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage.” The group’s report said that “long term effects of low doses [of DU] have been implicated in cancer … there is no dose so low that the probability of effect is zero.”


* In 1984, the Federal Aviation Administration warned its investigators, “If particles are inhaled or ingested, they can be chemically toxic and cause a significant and long-lasting irradiation of internal tissue.”

* In 1979, the U.S. Army Mobility Equipment, Research & Development Command warned, “Not only the people in the immediate vicinity (emergency and fire-fighting personnel) but also people at distances downwind from the fire are faced with potential over exposure to airborne uranium dust.”

Any threatened or actual use of poisonous, gene-busting depleted uranium munitions in Ukraine cannot be considered lawful or ethical and must be condemned unreservedly by civil society on all sides of the Ukraine war.

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.  https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/30/u-s-depleted-uranium-to-make-ukraine-war-dirtier/

July 7, 2023 Posted by | depleted uranium, Ukraine | 1 Comment

Ukraine, Russia accuse each other of planning to attack Europe’s biggest nuclear plant

9 News, By Associated Press Jul 6, 2023

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of planning to attack one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants.

Neither side provided evidence to support their claims on Wednesday (early Thursday AEST) of an imminent threat to the facility in south-eastern Ukraine, which is occupied by Russian troops.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has been a focus of concern since Moscow’s forces took control of it and its staff in the early stages of the war.

Russia and Ukraine have regularly traded blame over shelling near the plant that caused power outages. Over the last year, the UN’s atomic watchdog repeatedly expressed alarm over the possibility of a radiation catastrophe like the one at Chernobyl after a reactor exploded in 1986.

The six reactors at Zaporizhzhia are shut down, but the plant still needs power and qualified staff to run crucial cooling systems and other safety features………………………….

The International Atomic Energy Agency has officials stationed at the Russian-held plant, which is still run by its Ukrainian staff. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said his agency’s most recent inspection of the plant found no activity related to explosives, “but we remain extremely alert.”

“As you know, there is a lot of combat. I have been there a few weeks ago, and there is contact there very close to the plant, so we cannot relax,” Grossi said during a visit to Japan.

In Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov raised the spectre of a potentially “catastrophic” provocation by the Ukrainian army at the nuclear plant, which is Europe’s largest.

“The situation is quite tense. There is a great threat of sabotage by the Kyiv regime, which can be catastrophic in its consequences,” Peskov said in response to a reporter’s question about the plant.

He also claimed that the Kremlin was pursuing “all measures” to counter the alleged Ukrainian threat.

Grossi said he was aware of both Kyiv’s and Moscow’s claims and reiterated that “nuclear power plants should never, under any circumstances, be attacked.”

“A nuclear power plant should not be used as a military base,” he said.

Renat Karchaa, an adviser to Russian state nuclear company Rosenergoatom, said there was “no basis” for Zelenskyy’s claims of a plot to simulate an explosion.

“Why would we need explosives there? This is nonsense” aimed at “maintaining tension around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant”, Karchaa said.

Russian media on Tuesday cited Karchaa as saying that Ukraine’s military planned to strike the plant early on Wednesday with ammunition laced with nuclear waste. As of Wednesday afternoon, there was no indication of such an attack……………

In case of a nuclear disaster at the plant, approximately 300,000 people would be evacuated from the areas closest to the facility, according to the country’s emergency services.

Ukrainian officials have said the shut-down reactors are protected by thick concrete containment domes  https://www.9news.com.au/world/russia-ukraine-updates-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-attack-being-planned-ukraine-and-russia-accuse/5e82addc-49dd-455d-bfc8-31d7f3da6fd1—

July 6, 2023 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine | 1 Comment

Russia and Ukraine step up rhetoric around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

By Euronews Digital   05/07/2023  https://www.euronews.com/2023/07/05/russia-and-ukraine-step-up-rhetoric-around-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant

President Zelenskyy and other senior Ukrainian officials have intensified warnings that Russian forces plan to sabotage the Zaporizhzhia power plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe.

Russian and Ukrainian officials have escalated the rhetoric surrounding the situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

The plant has been under Russian control since the early days of the full-scale invasion in 2022. All six reactors have since been shut down.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are now warning of a “possible provocation in the near future” saying “items similar to explosive devices were placed on the external roof of the third and fourth power units of ZNPP.”

A few days earlier, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate claimed that Moscow had approved a plan to blow up the station and has mined four out of six power units, as well as the cooling pond. 

July 6, 2023 Posted by | politics international, Russia, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.

The U.S. public has been conned, once again, into pouring billions into another endless war.

The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.

The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, although one that was provoked by NATO expansion and by the United States backing of the 2014 “Maidan” coup which ousted the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych wanted economic integration with the European Union, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia. The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.

But this proxy war in Ukraine is designed to serve U.S. interests. It enriches the weapons manufacturers, weakens the Russian military and isolates Russia from Europe. What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant. 

“First, equipping our friends on the front lines to defend themselves is a far cheaper way — in both dollars and American lives — to degrade Russia’s ability to threaten the United States,” admitted Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

“Second, Ukraine’s effective defense of its territory is teaching us lessons about how to improve the defenses of partners who are threatened by China. It is no surprise that senior officials from Taiwan are so supportive of efforts to help Ukraine defeat Russia. Third, most of the money that’s been appropriated for Ukraine security assistance doesn’t actually go to Ukraine. It gets invested in American defense manufacturing. It funds new weapons and munitions for the U.S. armed forces to replace the older material we have provided to Ukraine. Let me be clear: this assistance means more jobs for American workers and newer weapons for American servicemembers.”

Once the truth about these endless wars seeps into public consciousness, the media, which slavishly promotes these conflicts, drastically reduces coverage. The military debacles, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue largely out of view. By the time the U.S. concedes defeat, most barely remember that these wars are being fought. 

The pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos migrate from administration to administration. Between posts they are ensconced in think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, The Atlantic Council and The Brookings Institution — funded by corporations and the war industry. Once the Ukraine war comes to its inevitable conclusion, these Dr. Strangeloves will seek to ignite a war with China. The U.S. Navy and military are already menacing and encircling China. God help us if we don’t stop them.

…………………………………………………………………………………… And what of the Ukrainian democracy we are fighting to protect? Why did the Ukrainian parliament revoke the official use of minority languages, including Russian, three days after the 2014 coup? How do we rationalize the eight years of warfare against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region before the Russian invasion in Feb. 2022? How do we explain the killing of over 14,200 people and the 1.5 million people who were displaced, before Russia’s invasion took place last year?

How do we defend the decision by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ban eleven opposition parties, including The Opposition Platform for Life, which had 10 percent of the seats in the Supreme Council, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, along with the Shariy Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc? How can we accept the banning of these opposition parties — many of which are on the left — while Zelenskyy allows fascists from the Svoboda and Right Sector parties, as well as the Banderite Azov Battalion and other extremist militias, to flourish? 

How do we deal with the anti-Russian purges and arrests of supposed “fifth columnists”  sweeping through Ukraine, given that 30 percent of Ukraine’s inhabitants are Russian speakers? How do we respond to the neo-Nazi groups supported by Zelenskyy’s government that harass and attack the LGBT community, the Roma population, anti-fascist protests and threaten city council members, media outlets, artists and foreign students? How can we countenance the decision by the U.S and its Western allies to block negotiations with Russia to end the war, despite Kyiv and Moscow apparently being on the verge of negotiating a peace treaty? 

I reported from Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 during the breakup of the Soviet Union.  NATO, we assumed, had become obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed security and economic agreements with Washington and Europe. Secretary of State James Baker in Ronald Reagan’s administration, along with the West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured Gorbachev that NATO would not be extended beyond the borders of a unified Germany. We naively thought the end of the Cold War meant that Russia, Europe and the U.S., would no longer have to divert massive resources to their militaries. 

The so-called “peace dividend,” however, was a chimera……………………

It was universally understood in Eastern and Central Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO expansion was unnecessary and a dangerous provocation. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War is a business.

In a classified diplomatic cable — obtained and released by WikiLeaks — dated Feb. 1, 2008, written from Moscow, and addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NATO-European Union Cooperative, National Security Council, Russia Moscow Political Collective, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, there was an unequivocal understanding that expanding NATO risked conflict with Russia, especially over Ukraine………………………………………………………..

The Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if the western alliance had honored its promises not to expand NATO beyond Germany’s borders and Ukraine had remained neutral. The pimps of war knew the potential consequences of NATO expansion. War, however, is their single minded vocation, even if it leads to a nuclear holocaust with Russia or China. 

The war industry, not Putin, is our most dangerous enemy.    https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/02/chris-hedges-they-lied-about-afghanistan-they-lied-about-iraq-and-they-are-lying-about-ukraine/

July 3, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine, weapons and war | 2 Comments

IAEA debunks Ukrainian claim about Europe’s largest nuclear plant

 https://www.rt.com/russia/578480-iaea-zaporozhye-nuclear-mines/ 26 June 23

There are no mines at the cooling pond of the Zaporozhye NPP, the UN watchdog has said

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), denied on Tuesday claims made by the Ukrainian government that the cooling pond of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) had been rigged with explosives. 

“The IAEA is aware of reports of mines having been placed near the cooling pond. No mines were observed at the site during the Director General’s visit, including the cooling pond,” Grossi said in a report on the situation at Europe’s largest atomic power facility.

There were mines outside the perimeter and “at particular places inside,”  which the security personnel at ZNPP explained were for defensive purposes, the IAEA head said. 

“Our assessment of those particular placements was that while the presence of any explosive device is not in line with safety standards, the main safety functions of the facility would not be significantly affected,” added Grossi.

His report comes after claims by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his aide Mikhail Podoliak that Russia had prepared a “terrorist attack” on the facility it has controlled since March 2022.

Ukrainian intelligence has received information that Russia is planning “a terrorist attack with radiation leakage,” Zelensky said in a tweet on Thursday morning, adding that “the world has been warned, so the world can and must act.”

Podoliak claimed that Russia was “considering a large-scale terrorist attack at the ZNPP to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive and create a depopulated sanitary gray zone,” and was mining the cooling pond, demanding that “the global world” should announce consequences “not tomorrow. Today.”

Zelensky’s claims are “yet another lie,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday, noting that Russia has fully cooperated with the IAEA. Moscow has insisted that Kiev was behind the destruction of the Kakhovka dam earlier this month, which the IAEA described as a potential threat to the ZNPP’s supply of cooling water.

According to Russia, Ukraine has also repeatedly attacked the ZNPP, including an attempted commando raid in September 2022, as the IAEA mission was en route to the site. The most recent attack was on June 9, when Russian air defenses reported bringing down three drones headed for the plant.

The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant has six reactors and is located in Energodar, on the right shore of the Dnieper River. It is currently operated by Rosatom in standby mode. The surrounding region officially became part of Russia last September.

July 3, 2023 Posted by | spinbuster, Ukraine | Leave a comment

2 important Russo Ukraine war stories: 1 covered 24/7; 1 covered up

It would be so nice for me to think (as a good, genuinely conservative, Christian Westerner and patriotic Australian) , – that this Walt Zlotow story is a pack of lies, (obviously from a paid stooge of Putin)

My problem is:   that everything that I see, read, hear, on Australian corporate media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation    – just happens to tally with what he is saying.

Good on Walt Zlotow for having the guts to speak out.

I’m just sorry that I think that he is not going to be believed.  The end result?    We might find a small group of (?)wealthy individuals presiding over a nearly dead planet.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 27June 23

Mainstream news got the figurative memo from the US State Dept. and military Friday: Full media press coverage of the mini insurrection against Russian President Putin that could potentially have toppled him. But not one word on the apparently failing Ukrainian counteroffensive the US was counting on before even considering negotiations to end the 17 month war.

That coverage simply continues the 487 days of media compliance with US not so subtle demands that the war be reported as Ukraine largely defeating a Russia hopelessly unable to secure control of Donbas and keep NATO off its doorstep.

If the American people were informed on Ukraine’s near complete inability to repel the Russian invaders, they might push back against the squandering of over a hundred billion dollars in US treasure on a futile cause not affecting US national security in the least.

If they knew we’re sending cluster bombs, prohibited by most countries, that can kill long after the war ends, if ever, they might call for negotiations, not more weapons.

If they knew we’re sending long range missiles to strike deep in Russia, possibly triggering nuclear confrontation, they might protest this madness.

But most Americans don’t know any of this. Like the apparently failing Ukrainian offensive, only good news, justifying America’s ghoulish demand this war goes on endlessly, gets on mainstream news.

If the US had that insane approach to diplomacy and negotiations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. We’d have all been blown away 61 years ago. more at https://www.antiwar.com/blog/author/walt_zlotow/

July 3, 2023 Posted by | spinbuster, Ukraine | Leave a comment

The changing narrative of the war in Ukraine

Meanwhile Secretary of State Antony Blinken is telling reporters that the dangers of human extinction from nuclear war are no greater than the dangers humanity faces from climate change. Goebels would be proud of him.

On the Russian home front do you feel that the country is at war? Armageddon Newsletter, GILBERT DOCTOROW, JUL 31, 2023

“……………………………………………………………………………………………..for those who can bear watching war news on television, the narrative has been changing, especially in the past week.  Until then, news of the material damage and bodily harm caused by daily Ukrainian bombardment of Donetsk city and other towns in the Donbas took up much of the news bulletins. Now the accent is on the destruction Russian forces are dealing out to the Ukrainians as Kiev directs larger scale attacks and brings into play its strategic reserves, especially in the Zaporozhie region. The new Ukrainian offensive appears to be no more successful than previous probing maneuvers in breaking though the dense Russian defense lines.

Russian military experts on the leading talk shows who showed great reserve about predicting the future course of the conflict lest Russians be overconfident a week ago now appear radiant and ready to confide that the Ukrainians never got the equipment they needed to make their counter-offensive a success.

As I noted in a recent essay, the Russian military command has been biding its time until it is certain that Ukraine was already committing its reserves to battle and would soon run dry.  Now that time is approaching. We see that the Russians are opening an offensive in the northeast, in the Kharkov region………………………

Against this background of the changes in the correlation of forces in Russia’s favor, I am stunned that U.S. and other observers and commentators are not taking note.

These authors like so many talking heads in the West do not have the necessary linguistic skills to access Russian news sources on their own. They depend wholly on propagandists in the State Department for the raw facts from which they can spin their reasonable compromises.  I humbly submit that this war will either end on Russia’s terms or it will escalate thanks to American miscalculations and obstinacy to the point of a nuclear exchange that puts the survival of humankind in peril.

Meanwhile Secretary of State Antony Blinken is telling reporters that the dangers of human extinction from nuclear war are no greater than the dangers humanity faces from climate change. Goebels would be proud of him.

 https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/on-the-russian-home-front-do-you?publication_id=1203055&post_id=135581086&isFreemail=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email—

July 2, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

IAEA Director General Grossi discusses nuclear safety with Russia’s Director of Rosatom, at Zaporizhzhia, in new consultations

MOSCOW, June 23  https://english.news.cn/20230624/19c5c0119ce24b04a7ab10e6a08f9a0b/c.html — General Director of Russia’s Rosatom State Corporation Alexey Likhachev discussed the current nuclear safety situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi in Russia’s Kaliningrad on Friday.

During the discussion, both delegations addressed issues raised by Grossi at the UN Security Council briefing on May 30, in which the official discussed the security situation at the nuclear facility, Rosatom said in a statement.

Likhachev emphasized that the Russian side “expects the IAEA Secretariat to take specific steps to prevent strikes by the Ukrainian armed forces both on the ZNPP and on the adjacent territory,” it added.

He informed Grossi about the specific measures currently being taken by the Russian side to ensure the nuclear facility’s safe operation, particularly its water supply “after the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam was destroyed by the Ukrainian armed forces,” Rosatom said.

Both sides further discussed the outcomes of Grossi’s visit to the plant on June 15. During his visit, Grossi was able to personally verify whether the plant could continue operating safely, and confirm among other things that the water supply in the cooling pond was sufficient for the safe operation of the facility

June 25, 2023 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Ukraine Can Develop Nuclear Weapons ‘Within a Short Time’: Ex-Zelensky Aide

BY JON JACKSON ON 6/23/23 

eksii Arestovych, a former adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said during a Thursday interview that Ukraine has the ability to quickly produce its own nuclear weapons “within a short time.”

Arestovych, who also served as an officer in Ukraine’s military intelligence service, made the remarks while speaking with Russian activist Mark Feygin…………… Arestovych has also stated that Crimea would be a major target for Zelensky’s forces during the conflict.  https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-can-develop-nuclear-weapons-within-short-time-ex-zelensky-aide-1808663

June 25, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Zelensky bans Russian books

The Ukrainian president has signed a controversial bill outlawing the import of Russian and Belarusian publications

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced on Thursday that he had signed a law making it illegal to import and distribute Russian and Belarusian language products in Ukraine. However, some Ukrainian officials have pointed out that the step could hinder Kiev’s plans to join the EU. 

The move comes after Ukrainian citizens registered an online petition on the official presidential website asking for the ban, back in May. The petition reached the 25,000-vote threshold required for it to be formally considered by the head of state. 

The author of the petition noted that the Ukrainian parliament had already approved the law on June 19, 2022, but that Zelensky had never signed the bill. As a result, Russian books continued to be sold in Ukraine, which undermines “the information security of the state and the economic foundations of Ukrainian book publishing,” according to the petition.  

“I consider the law to be correct,” Zelensky stated in a Telegram post announcing that he had finally signed the legislation. 

He noted, however, that the text of the legislation had been sent to EU institutions for an “additional assessment” of whether it could breach Kiev’s obligations to protect minority rights, particularly linguistic ones, in the context of Ukraine’s application for EU membership. 

In a written response to the petition last month, Zelensky explained that there had been a “number of reservations” that prevented the law from being adopted. 

The president stated that Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice had proposed applying the right of veto to the bill, arguing that completely banning the import and distribution of Russian publications would contradict several articles of Ukraine’s constitution. 

Additionally, Zelensky said that despite agreeing with the nature of the law, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry had also advised vetoing the bill. The ministry had warned that its current version “does not meet the norms and standards of the EU in the field of human rights, including freedom of opinion, protection of the rights of national minorities, prohibition of discrimination on the basis of language, and therefore may complicate the process of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.”

June 24, 2023 Posted by | civil liberties, media, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Eyewitness Donbas: Why the Majority Reject Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive

June 23, 2023 Posted by | Resources -audiovicual, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Silent Slaughter of the Flower of Ukraine’s Youth

Now that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway, it is clear that the government and its Western allies are maintaining silence to conceal the brutal cost Ukraine’s brave young people are paying.

By Medea Benjamin | Nicolas J.S. Davies / Common Dreams. June 21, 2023
 https://scheerpost.com/2023/06/21/the-silent-slaughter-of-the-flower-of-ukraines-youth/

As Ukraine prepared to launch its much heralded but long delayed counteroffensive, the media published a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier with his finger on his lips, symbolizing the need for secrecy to retain some element of surprise for this widely telegraphed operation.

Now that the offensive has been under way for two weeks, it is clear that the Ukrainian government and its Western allies are maintaining silence for quite a different reason: to conceal the brutal cost Ukraine’s brave young people are paying to recover small scraps of territory from Russian occupation forces, in what some are already calling a suicide mission.

Western pundits at first described these first two weeks of fighting as “probing operations” to find weak spots in Russia’s defenses, which Russia has been fortifying since 2022 with multiple layers of minefields, “dragon’s teeth,” tank-traps, pre-positioned artillery, and attack helicopters, unopposed in the air, that can fire 12 anti-tank missiles apiece.

On the advice of British military advisers in Kyiv, Ukraine flung Western tanks and armored vehicles manned by NATO-trained troops into these killing fields without air support or demining operations. The results have been predictably disastrous, and it is now clear that these are not just “probing” operations as the propaganda at first claimed, but the long-awaited main offensive.

A Western official with intelligence access told The Associated Press on June 14, “Intense fighting is now ongoing in nearly all sectors of the front… This is much more than probing. These are full-scale movements of armor and heavy equipment into the Russian security zone.”

Other glimpses are emerging of the reality behind the propaganda. At a press conference after a summit at NATO Headquarters, U.S. General Mark Milley warned that the offensive will be long, violent, and costly in Ukrainian lives.

“This is a very difficult fight. It’s a very violent fight, and it will likely take a considerable amount of time and at high cost,” Milley said.

Russian videos show dozens of Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles lying smashed in minefields, and NATO military advisers in Ukraine have confirmed that it lost 38 tanks in one night on June 8, including newly delivered German-built Leopard IIs.

Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute explained to TheNew York Times that the Russians are trying to inflict as many casualties and destroy as many vehicles as possible in the areas in front of their main defensive lines, turning those areas into lethal kill zones. If this strategy works, any Ukrainian forces that reach the main Russian defense lines will be too weakened and depleted to break through and achieve their goal of severing Russia’s land bridge between Donbas and Crimea.


Russia’s Ministry of Defense reported that Ukraine’s forces suffered 7,500 casualties in the first 10 days of the offensive. If Ukraine’s real losses are a fraction of that, the long, violent bloodbath that General Milley anticipates will destroy the new armored brigades that NATO has armed and trained, and serve only to escalate the gory war of attrition that has destroyed Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, and Bakhmut, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians and Russians.

A senior European military officer in Ukraine provided more details of the carnage to Asia Times, calling Ukraine’s operations on June 8 and 9 a “suicide mission” that violated the basic rules of military tactics.

“We tried to tell them to stop these piecemeal tactics, define a main thrust with infantry support and do what they can,” he said. “They were trained by the British, and they’re playing Light Brigade,” he added, comparing the offensive to a suicidal charge into massive Russian cannon fire that wiped out Britain’s Light Cavalry Brigade in Crimea in 1854.

If Ukraine’s “Spring Offensive” plunges on to the bitter end, it could be more like the British and French Somme Offensive, fought near the French River Somme in 1916. After 19,240 British troops were killed on the first day (including Nicolas’s 20-year-old great-uncle, Robert Masterman), the battle raged on for more than four months of pointless, wanton slaughter, with over a million British, French, and German casualties. It was finally called off after advancing only six miles and failing to capture either of the two small French towns that were its initial objectives.

The current offensive was delayed for months as Ukraine and its allies grappled with the likelihood of the outcome we are now witnessing. The fact that it went ahead regardless reflects the moral bankruptcy of U.S. and NATO political leaders, who are sacrificing the flower of Ukraine’s youth in a proxy war they will not send their own children or grandchildren to fight.

As Ukraine launches its offensive, NATO is conducting Air Defender, the largest military exercise in its history, from June 12 to 23, with 250 warplanes, including nuclear-capable F-35s, flying from German bases to simulate combat operations in and over Germany, Lithuania, Romania, the North Sea, and the Baltic Sea. The exercise has led to at least 15 incidents between NATO and Russian aircraft in the skies near Lithuania.

It seems that nobody in NATO’s foreboding fortress in Brussels has stumbled on the concept of a “security dilemma,” in which supposedly defensive actions by one party are perceived as offensive threats by another and lead to a spiral of mutual escalation, as has been the case between NATO and Russia since the 1990s. Professor of Russian history Richard Sakwa has written, “NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”

These risks will be evident in the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius on July 11-12, where Ukraine and its eastern allies will be pushing for Ukraine membership, while the U.S. and western Europe insist that membership cannot be offered while the war rages on and will instead offer “upgraded” status and a shorter route to membership once the war ends.

The continued insistence that Ukraine will one day be a NATO member only means a prolongation of the conflict, as this is a red line that Russia insists cannot be crossed. That’s why negotiations that lead to a neutral Ukraine are key to ending the war.

But the United States will not agree to that as long as President Joe Biden keeps U.S. Ukraine policy firmly under the thumbs of hawkish neoconservative desk warriors like Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland at the State Department and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at the White House. Pressure to keep escalating U.S. involvement in the war is also coming from Congress, where Republicans accuse Biden of “hemming and hawing” instead of “going all in” to help Ukraine.

Paradoxically, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are more realistic than their civilian colleagues about the lack of any military solution. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, has called for diplomacy to bring peace to Ukraine, and U.S. intelligence sources have challenged dominant false narratives of the war in leaks to Newsweek and Seymour Hersh, telling Hersh that the neocons are ignoring genuine intelligence and inventing their own, just as they did to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

With the retirement of Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the State Department is losing the voice of a professional diplomat who was President Barack Obama’s chief negotiator for the JCPOA with Iran and urged Biden to rejoin the agreement, and who has taken steps to moderate U.S. brinkmanship toward China. While publicly silent on Ukraine, Sherman was a quiet voice for diplomacy in a war-mad administration.

Many fear that Sherman’s job will now go to Nuland, the leading architect of the ever-mounting catastrophe in Ukraine for the past decade, who already holds the #3 or #4 job at State as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

Other departures from the senior ranks at State and the Pentagon are likely to cede more ground to the neocons. Colin Kahl, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who worked with Sherman on the JCPOA, opposed sending F-16s to Ukraine, and has maintained that China will not invade Taiwan in the near future. Kahl is leaving the Pentagon to return to his position as a professor at Stanford, just as China hawk General C.Q. Brown will replace General Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs when Milley retires in September.

Meanwhile, other world leaders continue to push for peace talks. A delegation of African heads of state led by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, and President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on June 17, to discuss the African peace plan for Ukraine.

President Putin showed the African leaders the 18-point Istanbul Agreement that a Ukrainian representative had signed back in March 2022, and told them that Ukraine had thrown it in the “dustbin of history,” after the now disgraced Boris Johnson told Zelenskyy the “collective West” would only support Ukraine to fight, not to negotiate with Russia.

The catastrophic results of the first two weeks of Ukraine’s offensive should focus the world’s attention on the urgent need for a ceasefire to halt the daily slaughter and dismemberment of hundreds of brave young Ukrainians, who are being forced to drive through minefields and kill zones in Western gifts that are proving to be no more than U.S.- and NATO-built death-traps

June 22, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | 1 Comment

The Reverse Cuban Missile Crisis

America now plans to install tactical nuclear weapons in Romania and Poland. 

BY TYLER DURDEN. WEDNESDAY, JUN 21, 2023 – Authored by Gilbert Doctorow,  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/reverse-cuban-missile-crisis

What I am about to say is surely known and under analysis in the American intelligence agencies. It is being used by the Pentagon to quietly change its nuclear force posture in Europe. However, we hear not a word about it in the media, not in mainstream, and not yet in alternative news.

I maintain that it is very important for it to be heard and reflected upon by the general public in the United States and in Europe, disagreeable though it may be at the start of a new week. So here goes…

Last Friday when I published my selective account of the Q&A session with President Vladimir Putin at the culmination point of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum I omitted one important issue:

how Russia will respond to the dispatch of “Ukrainian” F-16s from some air base in a NATO country into the war zone in Ukraine.  I was considering remedying that oversight on Saturday morning when a comment from one reader forced my hand. She wrote in that Italy’s daily newspaper La Repubblica quoted Putin as saying on Friday Russia will destroy such a base in response. I responded on Saturday in the Comments section that the Russian President had in fact been evasive in his comment, saying only that Russia could destroy such a base and was now taking the issue under advisement.

However, yesterday evening’s edition of the Vladimir Solovyov talk show indicates that the Republicca reporter was closer to the truth than I. A patient and knowledgeable Russian colonel in retirement who is a frequent guest on the talk show explained  that the Kremlin is now considering exactly with what means to destroy such a NATO air base, not whether to do it. And the likely means will be use of tactical nuclear weapons on a Ramstein or whatever NATO base is involved. We may say that Germany is placing itself in the bulls-eye of any escalation in the Ukraine war if it proceeds with the F-16s to Ukraine program.

Why all the fuss over the F-16s, you may ask. After all, Putin has said loud and clear that Russia will destroy the F-16s in the air just as it has been destroying the Leopard tanks and America’s Bradley armored personnel carriers while pushing back the ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive. To understand better, we have to thank the good colonel once again. He alerted us to an important detail that you will not find mentioned in The New York Times:

the first F-16s scheduled to be supplied to the Ukrainian Air Force are from Belgium and Denmark, and are all nuclear-capable, which is not a necessary feature of these planes. 

Since the Russians are unable to determine what kind of munitions the “Ukrainian” F-16s will actually be delivering to the war zone, they must assume that they are carrying tactical nuclear bombs intended to be dropped on the Russian Army troop concentrations. The effect of such an attack could be devastating, hence the Russian threat to the air bases from which such planes are launched.

The next important revelation made during the Solovyov show came with respect to the first delivery of tactical nuclear weapons to Minsk which was marked by a visit to Belarus and interview with Lukashenko by the co-host of the Sixty Minutes news and discussion show Olga Skabeyeva. In answer to her question about where the nuclear warheads are being stored, Lukashenko said ‘everywhere.’  The meaning of this was kindly deciphered for us laymen by the colonel in retirement on the Solovyov program:  this signifies a cardinal shift in the Russian handling of tactical nuclear arms away from their traditional separation of the warheads kept in a central storage far from the delivery carriers to the method used by the U.S. military with respect to its tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. The Americans, he said stored the nukes just under the jets that would be used to deliver them.  Now in Belarus, the warheads will also be just next to the planes and Iskander missiles that will carry them. This means that the time to launch will depend only on the time for approval from the Boss. And with respect to that, Lukashenko told Skabeyeva that he had just to make a phone call to Vladimir Vladimirovich and approval would be instantaneous.

Why such a hair-trigger mechanism for unleashing nuclear weapons to defend Belarus?  For an answer to that, go to Monday’s article in The Financial Times on how Poland is now preparing hundreds of Belarus fighters to go across the border and overthrow Lukashenko. To which I can only say:  Warsaw, watch out!  Lukashenko is one bold and decisive defender of his country, as his standing on the streets with a Kalashnikov in his hands when there were Western financed and promoted street demonstrations in Minsk aiming to overthrow him.

Still another item from the Solovyov show demanding our attention concerns what the good colonel calls the American response to the shipment of nuclear arms to Belarus:  America now plans to install tactical nuclear weapons in Romania and Poland.  Why, one might ask, in those two countries? For that you need only consider what the Kremlin has been saying for more than a decade about the U.S. bases set up in both countries supposedly to house anti-ballistic missile systems intended to bring down Iranian missiles fired on Europe. The Russians always objected that these installations would be dual-purpose and were a cover for placing nuclear-armed cruise missiles directed against themselves.  Now if the USA indeed puts such missiles into the two countries, the Russian claims will have been vindicated and Washington is shown, yet again, to be a blatant liar on the world stage.

Finally, the colonel gave us an invaluable insight to changes in Russian thinking on tactical nuclear weapons which we otherwise missed. I have in mind Putin’s answer at the Forum to the question of whether Russia would use tactical nuclear weapons in the Ukraine theater. Putin’s loud and clear ‘no’ was, of course, an answer to the proposals of Sergei Karaganov for preemptive and instructive nuclear strikes in his just published essay in the magazine Russia in Global Affairs. As I reported, Putin went on to say that Russia has no need to show force by some preemptive strike because everyone knows it has many more tactical weapons than the West. And while the United States has called for talks on reduction of stockpiles of such weapons, Russia will not enter into such talks, and says to the West, “fuck you,” if I may translate his rude remark in Russian into corresponding four-letter English.

That last remark brought smiles to the faces of many Russians in the audience. But it was not just theatrics, says the good colonel: in fact Russia had been talking with Americans about the possibility of reducing stockpiles, but now, in the context of the NATO proxy war it has no intention of resuming such talks.

With that I end today’s survey of our dismal progression on the way to Armageddon.

June 22, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »