The anti-Russia, pre-SMO, Timeline of Which Legacy Media Won’t Speak
timeline of events leading up to the commencement in February 2022 of Russia’s Special Military Operation
Eva Karene Bartlett, Oct 28, 2025, https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/the-anti-russia-pre-smo-timeline?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=177345476&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Very useful written timeline of events leading up to the commencement in February 2022 of Russia’s Special Military Operation.
Jacques Baud discussed much of this (see bottom of this post), but this written account is worth bookmarking.
Alan Watson:
“Vladimir Putin did not wake up on 24 February 2022 and decide, “I think I’ll invade eastern Ukraine today,” nor was the US campaign to expand NATO into Ukraine a last-minute maneuver. (US State Department documents show Ukraine’s future membership was discussed as early as 1994.)
9 Feb 1990: In a deal approved by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, as a quid pro quo for accepting German reunification within NATO, Secretary of State James Baker pledged that NATO would not expand “one inch to the east.”
US, European and German leaders made explicit assurances to Gorbachev against any future eastward NATO expansion. Gorbachev understood the assurances as a “binding agreement.” Subsequently, Soviet leaders made decisions on that basis and acted on them – withdrawing the Red Army from Germany and dissolving the Warsaw Pact.
12 March 1999: Clinton is president. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland became members of NATO. A weakened post-Soviet Russia, led by Boris Yeltsin, controlled by a cabal of Oligarchs, could do nothing to prevent it. Powerless, Yeltsin was said to be “infuriated” with “his friend Bill Clinton…”
29 March 2004: George W. Bush is president. Seven more Eastern European countries join NATO: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – largest wave of NATO enlargement ever.
April 2008: At the Bucharest NATO summit, George W. Bush announced that Ukraine and Georgia are on an “immediate path to NATO.” Bill Burns, ambassador to Russia, sent a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Across the board,” he wrote, the Russian political class told him, “Ukraine is the reddest of red lines” – “Nyet means nyet.”
22 Feb 2014: Just as the Sochi Winter Olympics were underway, Kiev erupted in violence. State Department official Virginia Nuland boasted that since the 2004-2005 “Orange Revolution,” the US had spent $5 billion on regime change in Ukraine. NATO rooftop snipers killed both protestors and police, forcing Ukraine’s democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country.
2 May 2014: Bussed to Odessa from Kiev, Right Sector thugs carrying baseball bats confront ethnic Russians protesting the coup. When protestors fled into the city’s Trade Unions House, the building was set on fire. Forty-eight people were burned or bludgeoned to death – the Donbass civil war point of no return.
11 Feb 2015: Putin and Ukrainian President Poroshenko meet with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Belarus to negotiate the Minsk ceasefire accords. The leaders agreed to a deal that would have ended the fighting – granting autonomy to the Russian-speaking Donbass, but successive Ukrainian governments refused to implement the accord.
German Chancellor Merkel later admitted that Minsk was a stall tactic to allow the West to build Ukraine’s army up to NATO standards. [Ed. note – Zelensky also admitted that he lied in his campaign for President, in pledging to uphold the Minsk agreement]
17 Dec 2021: Team Biden rejects Putin’s proposed mutual security accords that would have left a “neutral” Ukraine intact. For years, Russia had tried to convince US administrations that Ukraine was off-limits to NATO membership, but Russian concerns were brushed aside. December 2021, Team Biden insisted, “Russia doesn’t say who can join NATO.”
18 Feb 2022: During the Winter Olympics in China, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) documented that Ukraine had ramped up artillery attacks along the Line of Contact.
(Since the 2014 coup in Kiev, the Armed forces of Ukraine, including the Neo-Nazi Banderites, had killed thousands of ethnic Russians in the Donbass.
19 Feb 2022: Invited to speak at the Munich Security Conference, Ukrainian President Zelensky said, “Ukraine will get and deploy nuclear missiles.”
20 Feb 2022: On CBS 60 Minutes, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said, “Ukraine will never honor the Minsk cease fire.”
21 Feb 2022: Russia captured a Ukrainian soldier, killed five others as they crossed over the border into Rostov. Russia learned the invasion of Donetsk city was imminent and recognized the breakaway Donbass and Luhansk oblasts as independent republics.
24 Feb 2022: With about 90,000 troops, Russia launched its “Special Military Operation” – not a “full scale invasion.” Citing the UN principle, “Responsibility to Protect,” Russia intervened in the eight-year Donbass civil war after all prospects for diplomacy had failed.
April 2022, week six of the war, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators convened peace talks in Istanbul. Later, Ukrainian diplomat Oleksandr Chalyi recalled, “Putin tried to do everything possible to conclude an agreement…” [The tentative accord would have left a “neutral” #Ukraine intact.]
On 1 April, USAID revealed photographic evidence of a “massacre” in Bucha and financed a press tour featuring US public figures. Problem: Four days earlier at a press conference, the mayor had announced that the Russians had retreated from the city [and he did not report there had been a massacre].
After the Russians voluntarily retreated, the regime scattered bodies in the streets that included both actors in body bags and recently killed “Russian collaborators” from around Bucha – giving an “outraged” Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, who flew unannounced to Kiev, the justification to order Zelensky to “keep fighting.”
If the US, UK and EU continue rejecting Russian proposals for a long term, European wide peace accord – as Putin proposed in December 2021 – the Russian army will continue advancing toward Kharkiv in the north and Odessa on the Black Sea. As Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized: There will be no Minsk III.”
From a September 2024 interview I did with Jacques Baud (former Swiss intelligence & author). In this clip, Jacques lays out the history of events related to Ukraine prior to 2022, prior even to the 2014 coup which brought fascism to power in Ukraine, & how it was the NATO-Ukraine alliance which brought war, not Russia.
Full interview: https://rumble.com/v5fjhrh-jacques-baud-nato-threatened-russia-decades-before-2022.html https://odysee.com/@EvaKareneBartlett:9/JacquesBaudNATOThreatenedRussia:5
ATOMIC BLACKMAIL? The Weaponisation of Nuclear Facilities During the Russia-Ukraine War.
a protagonist could use long-range munitions to turn a NPP into a dirty bomb that would spread radioactive contamination over a wide area, dispersing or diverting army formations, rendering civilian infrastructure and farmland unusable, contaminating groundwater and creating a radioactive cloud that would – if the wind was blowing in a convenient direction – cause transborder harms.
Simon Ashley Bennett, https://www.libripublishing.co.uk/Products/CatID/16/ProdID=292
In Atomic Blackmail? Simon Bennett examines the very real possibility of the ‘weaponisation’ of nuclear facilities during the Russia-Ukraine War. The Russia-Ukraine War has several unique aspects, the most striking of which is that it is being fought in proximity to nuclear facilities and working nuclear power stations, including the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), Europe’s largest, and the decommissioned four-reactor Chernobyl NPP that, in 1986, suffered a catastrophic failure that released radioactive contamination across much of Europe. Some experts claim the contamination caused several thousand excess cancer deaths.
In 1985, foreign affairs and nuclear expert Bennett Ramberg published Nuclear Power Plants: An Unrecognised Military Peril, with a second edition of the book published in 1992. In his visionary discourse, Ramberg posited that in future wars, regional or global, nuclear facilities and powerplants might be weaponised, to gain political traction over an opponent and/or neutralise opposing forces’ capacity for battlefield manoeuvre.
In one scenario, Ramberg described how a protagonist could use long-range munitions to turn a NPP into a dirty bomb that would spread radioactive contamination over a wide area, dispersing or diverting army formations, rendering civilian infrastructure and farmland unusable, contaminating groundwater and creating a radioactive cloud that would – if the wind was blowing in a convenient direction – cause transborder harms. As demonstrated by the Chernobyl disaster, a reactor malfunction can generate serious and long-lasting environmental impacts. Radioactive particles released from Chernobyl’s devastated Reactor Number Four were deposited as far afield as the Cumbrian hills in north-west England.
While, at the time of writing, none of Ukraine’s fifteen reactors had been damaged in an exchange of fire, the possibility remains that this could happen during Ukraine’s 2023, and subsequent, offensives to expel Russian forces from sovereign Ukrainian territory. Much to the consternation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there have been several near-misses, with weapons fired in and around both the decommissioned Chernobyl NPP and working Zaporizhzhia NPP. Further, Russian long-range precision munitions (cruise missiles) have been tracked flying either close to, or over Ukraine’s NPPs. The Pivdennoukrainsk (South Ukraine) NPP has been overflown. On 20 September, 2022, a missile landed some 300 metres from the NPP.
While Ramberg’s nightmare vision of destroyed NPPs rendering a country uninhabitable has not, yet, been realised in the Russia-Ukraine War, the longer and more intense the conflict, the greater the likelihood that one or more of Ukraine’s NPPs will be damaged or, via a credible sabotage threat, used to leverage tactical or strategic advantage. Atomic blackmail finally exampled.
Ukraine Says It Struck a Chemical Plant Inside Russia With British-Provided Storm Shadow Missiles
The Ukrainian military requires US targeting data to fire Storm Shadow missiles
by Dave DeCamp | October 21, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/21/ukraine-says-it-struck-a-chemical-plant-inside-russia-with-british-provided-storm-shadow-missile/
Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday that it used British-provided Storm Shadow missiles to strike a chemical plant inside Russia’s Bryansk Oblast, signaling the US is again supporting Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian territory.
“A massive combined missile-and-air strike was carried out, including with air-launched Storm Shadow missiles that penetrated Russia’s air defence system,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a statement, according to Reuters. So far, the attack hasn’t been confirmed by Russia.
Storm Shadows are produced jointly by the UK and France and have a range of about 150 miles. Ukraine first began firing them into Russia last year, along with US-provided ATACMS missiles, which can hit targets up to 190 miles away.
In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was not allowing Ukraine to fire ATACMS into Russia, a policy that also applied to Storm Shadows, since the Ukrainian military requires US targeting data to fire the British missiles. But another report from the outlet this month said that President Trump reversed the policy and signed off on providing Ukraine with intelligence for long-range missile strikes on Russian territory.
The Financial Times has also reported that the Trump administration has been providing intelligence for long-range drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure since July.
US-backed missile and drone attacks on Russian territory always risk a major escalation from Moscow. When President Biden first gave Ukraine the green light to fire ATACMS and Storm Shadows into Russia, Moscow responded by altering its nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.
Russia to Raise Cold War Nuclear Submarines From Arctic—What’s Hiding on the Seabed?
Ivan Khomenko, Oct 20, 2025 , https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-to-raise-cold-war-nuclear-submarines-from-arctic-whats-hiding-on-the-seabed-12644
Russia plans to begin preparations in 2026 for raising two Soviet-era nuclear submarines that sank in Arctic waters, according to RBC on October 18. The recovery work itself is scheduled to start in 2027.
As RBC reported, the draft federal budget for 2026 and the planned period of 2027–2028 includes allocations for rehabilitating Arctic sea areas contaminated by sunken or submerged radiation-hazardous objects.
These activities are part of Russia’s state program Development of the Atomic Energy and Industrial Complex.
According to the explanatory note cited by RBC, the section titled “Safe Handling of Federal Radioactive Waste and Decommissioning of Nuclear and Radiation-Hazardous Legacy Facilities” earmarks 10.5 billion rubles for 2026, 10.7 billion for 2027, and 10.6 billion for 2028.
The project reportedly focuses on two of the seven sunken Soviet nuclear submarines—K-27 and K-159.
K-27, introduced in 1963, was an experimental submarine equipped with liquid-metal cooled reactors using a lead-bismuth alloy. In 1968, during its third voyage, a reactor accident exposed more than 140 crew members to radiation, killing nine.
The vessel was scuttled in the Kara Sea in 1981 and now lies at a depth of about 75 meters.
K-159 entered service the same year as K-27 and remained operational until 1989. It sank in 2003 in the Barents Sea while being towed for dismantling near Kildin Island, resulting in the deaths of nine crew members. The wreck rests at approximately 250 meters.
Plans to lift these submarines have been discussed for more than a decade but were repeatedly postponed due to the lack of specialized equipment, qualified personnel, and safety concerns. In 2021, Rosatom estimated that raising the vessels would cost around 24.4 billion rubles.
The renewed inclusion of the project in Russia’s 2026 budget marks the first concrete step since 2012 toward removing the radioactive wrecks from the Arctic seabed, though the exact reasons for the timing remain unclear, RBC noted.
Earlier in October, Russia’s Novorossiysk submarine—armed with Kalibr cruise missiles—was forced to abandon its Mediterranean mission and return to Saint Petersburg after a fuel leak disabled its underwater capability.
The incident highlighted Russia’s growing naval limitations following the loss of its Syrian logistics hub in Tartus and Turkey’s blockade of the Bosphorus Strait.
Moscow puts money on the table to raise nuclear subs from Arctic seabed
Both the K-27 and the K-159 represent ticking radioactive time-bombs for the Arctic marine environment.
The Government’s draft budget for 2026, and the planned budget for 2027-2028, include funding to lift the K-27 and K-159, two wrecked submarines that are resting on the seabed in the Barents Sea and Kara Sea.
Thomas Nilsen, 20 October 2025 –https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/news/moscow-puts-money-on-the-table-to-raise-nuclear-subs-from-arctic-seabed/439056
It is the state nuclear corporation Rosatom that told news outlet RBK about the plans to finally do something about the ticking radioactive time-bombs.
“The draft federal budget for 2026 and the 2027-2028 planning period includes funding for the rehabilitation of Arctic seas from sunken and dumped radiation-hazardous objects, beginning in 2027. Preparations for the planned work will begin in 2026,” the press service of Rosatom said.
An explanatory note to Rosatom’s budget post for disposal of nuclear and radiation-hazardous nuclear legacy sites details how 30 billion rubles for the three-year period are earmarked for planning and lifting of the Cold War era submarines left on the Arctic seabed.
The K-27 and the K-159 are the most urgent to raise and bring to shore for safe scrapping.
While the K-27 was dumped on purpose in 1982 in the Stepovoy Bay on the Kara Sea side of Novaya Zemlya, the sinking of the K-159 in the Barents Sea was an accident.
Lifting a nuclear submarine from the seabed is nothing new. It is difficult, but doable.
In 2002, the Dutch salvage company Mammoet managed to raise the ill-fated Kursk submarine from the Barents Sea. A special barge was built with wires attached underneath. The wreck of the Kursk was safely brought in and placed in a floating dock where the decommissioning took place.
Aleksandr Nikitin, a nuclear safety expert with the Bellona Foundation in Oslo, said to the Barents Observer that it is too early to conclude that the lifting actually will happen, or whether this is a preliminary plan that needs to be developed before concluding.
“As far as I understand, there’s no concrete plan,” Nikitin said.
Before Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Aleksandr Nikitin was member of Rosatom’s Public Chamber, a body that worked with non-governmental organisations to foster transparency and civic engagement on nuclear safety related issues in Russia.
Nikitin believes there still is infrastructure on the Kola Peninsula to deal with the two submarines if they are lifted from the seabed.
“Rosatom is currently trying not to destroy what the French built in Gremikha, hoping to dismantle the K-27 there if it’s raised. This is a special facility where this nuclear submarine with a liquid metal coolant reactor can be dismantled,” he explained.
“As for the K-159, it could be dismantled, for example, at Nerpa.”
Nerpa is a shipyard north of Murmansk that decommissioned several Cold War submarines at the time when Russia maintained cooperation with European partners, including Norway.
Ticking radioactive time-bombs
Both the K-27 and the K-159 represent ticking radioactive time-bombs for the Arctic marine environment.
The K-159 is a November-class submarine that sank in late August 2003 while being towed in bad weather from the closed naval base of Gremikha on the eastern shores of the Kola Peninsula towards the Nerpa shipyard north of Murmansk.
Researchers have since then monitored the wreck, fearing leakages of radioactivity from the two old nuclear reactors onboard could contaminate the important fishing grounds in the Barents Sea. A joint Norwegian-Russian expedition examined the site in 2014 and concluded that no leakage has so far occurred from the reactors to the surrounding marine environment.
However, the bad shape of the hull could eventually lead to radionuclides leaking out.
The two onboard reactors contain about 800 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel, with an estimated 5,3 GBq of radionuclides.
A modelling study by the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research said that a pulse discharge of the entire Cesium-137 inventory from the two reactors could increase concentrations in cod in the eastern part of the Barents Sea up to 100 times current levels for a two-year period after the discharge. While a Cs-137 increase of 100 times in cod sounds dramatic, the levels would still be below international guidelines. But that increase could still make it difficult to market the affected fish.
The K-27, the other submarine that it is urgent to lift, was on purpose dumped in the Kara Sea in 1982. In September 2021, divers from the Centre for Underwater Research of the Russian Geographical Society conducted a survey of the submarine’s hull. Metal pieces were cut free, the thickness of the hull was measured, along with other inspections of the submarine that has been corroding on the seabed for more than 40 years.
In aditionl to the K-27 and K-159, there are also the other dumped reactors in the Kara Sea, including from the K-11, K-19 and K-140, as well as spent nuclear fuel from an older reactor serving the icebreaker Lenin.
In Soviet times, thousands of containers with solid radioactive waste from both the civilian icebreaker fleet and the military Navy were dumped at different locations in the Kara Sea.
1000s of nuclear bombs? Russia exits US nuke pact to reclaim 34 tons of plutonium
The pact required both nations to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium.
Kapil Kajal Oct 09, 2025 , https://interestingengineering.com/military/russia-dumps-us-nuclear-deal
ussia has officially pulled out of an important agreement with the United States regarding how to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium.
According to Russia’s state news agency TASS, the lower house of the Parliament passed a legislation on October 8 to officially denounce the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA).
The pact required both nations to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for thousands of nuclear warheads, by converting it into fuel for civilian power reactors.
Terminating nuclear pact
The deal, signed in 2000 and ratified in 2011, was designed to ensure that plutonium declared surplus for defense needs could never again be used for weapons.
However, Russia is no longer willing to follow its agreements with the United States regarding plutonium.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told lawmakers that the current situation makes it unacceptable to keep these obligations.
Ryabkov pointed out that Russia’s demands for restoring the deal have not been met. These demands include lifting US sanctions, reversing the Magnitsky Act, and reducing NATO’s military presence near Russia’s borders.
The Russian government explained to parliament that it is withdrawing from the deal due to “fundamental changes in circumstances,” including NATO expansion, US sanctions, and military support from Washington for Ukraine.
Although the agreement was technically in place, Russia stopped participating in 2016. It accused the US of not meeting its obligations and using the agreement for political gain.
The Kremlin at the time demanded concessions unrelated to the agreement, such as restrictions on NATO activities in Eastern Europe and the lifting of sanctions imposed after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
34 tons of plutonium
The termination of the PMDA means that the 34 tons of plutonium Russia had pledged to render unusable for weapons could now be reclassified as part of its strategic reserves.
The State Duma’s official statement described further commitments on the material as “inexpedient.”
The decision adds to the growing list of suspended or terminated arms control agreements between Moscow and Washington.
Russia has already withdrawn from the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, suspended its participation in New START, and halted cooperation under the Open Skies treaty.
The plutonium agreement was among the few remaining technical measures of nuclear risk reduction from the early 2000s.
While smaller in scale than New START, the PMDA was seen as a pragmatic step toward reducing stockpiles of weapons-usable material in both nations.
Tomahawk cruise missiles
The move comes as geopolitical tensions between the US and Russia continue to escalate over the war in Ukraine.
On the same day the withdrawal was announced, the Kremlin condemned Washington’s reported deliberations over providing Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kyiv.
“If the U.S. administration ultimately makes that decision, it will not only risk escalating the spiral of confrontation, but also inflict irreparable damage on Russian-US relations,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to TASS.
She added that Moscow was “closely monitoring” the situation and urged the US to exercise restraint
The United States has not yet commented on Russia’s decision to terminate the plutonium deal.
However, the move underscores the growing collapse of bilateral nuclear cooperation amid the deepest rift between Washington and Moscow in decades.
The developments also come as Bloomberg reported on September 30 that Russia remained the largest supplier of enriched uranium to the United States in 2024, providing about 20 percent of the fuel used in American nuclear reactors despite formal import restrictions.
US waivers still permit deliveries through 2028 for national energy security reasons.
As both countries move further away from long-standing nuclear agreements, experts warn that ending the PMDA shows a growing risk to global nuclear safety and a widening rift in US-Russia relations.
Back to Great Power Rivalry and Nuclear Risk as Russia Quits US Plutonium Pact.
8 Oct, 2025 – Defense News Army 2025
Russia’s State Duma on Oct. 8, 2025 approved withdrawing from the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, which required the U.S. and Russia to each dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium. The move deepens the unraveling of U.S.-Russia arms control as New START’s limits on deployed warheads and delivery systems face expiration in early 2026.
According to Reuters on 8 October 2025, the Duma approved Russia’s withdrawal from the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, signed in 2000 and in force since 2011, which required Washington and Moscow to dispose of 34 metric tons each of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for thousands of Cold War-era warheads. The decision, taken in Moscow by the lower house of parliament, ends a key pillar of managing military-plutonium stockpiles, with the Kremlin citing the deterioration of the arms-control framework with the United States. This break comes as New START approaches its early-2026 expiry, a treaty that caps forces at 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 deployed strategic delivery systems, and as Moscow “suspended” inspections in 2023 while stating it would observe the ceilings. In September 2025, the Kremlin also pledged to remain close to those limits if Washington did the same.
The announcement lands while New START remains the last strategic-arms-limitation accord still in effect. It sets identical caps for both sides with well-defined counting rules, even though routine inspections have been suspended by Russia since 2023 and the outlook for any extension is uncertain. Practitioners of deterrence know these parameters and the compliance mechanics; what matters here is the dynamic they create, less verification means greater distrust and more room for edge-gaming…………………………………………………………………………………..
Finally, nuclear risks are rising across the board, driven by the rapid modernization of Russian, Chinese, and North Korean arsenals, joint patrols, and questions over the perceived credibility of U.S. extended deterrence in several regions. Washington and its allies face a clear, if costly, set of tasks. Hold the line in Ukraine, step up counter-proliferation measures that target dual-use parts and component networks, and reopen, wherever feasible, risk-reduction channels with Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang, including areas not covered by classic treaties. In the absence of a treaty, some experts advocate transparency gestures and minimal operational constraints to shrink uncertainty. The hard problem now is competition with two nuclear peers, China growing its warhead count and Russia preserving upload margins plus out-of-framework systems from Avangard to Poseidon. In this landscape, leaving the PMDA is not a technical footnote, it is a stitch in the safety net coming undone. https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/back-to-great-power-rivalry-and-nuclear-risk-as-russia-quits-us-plutonium-pact
Russian Nuke Plant Latest To Suffer War-Inflicted Damage
The Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant was damaged in a string of incidents at four facilities in the region over the past two weeks.
Howard Altman, Oct 7, 2025, https://www.twz.com/news-features/russian-nuke-plant-latest-to-suffer-war-inflicted-damage
ussia’s atomic energy agency said a Ukrainian drone struck a cooling tower of the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant (NNPP), located about 100 miles north of the border. While officials say there was no substantial damage to the plant, it was the fourth nuclear power facility in the region to have munitions land on or very close to it in the past two weeks.
Regardless of the level of damage incurred at NNPP, Russia is worried enough about drone strikes on its nuclear facilities that it is beefing up its defenses at a test site in the Arctic. You can read more about that later in this story.
The NNPP cooling tower was hit by a drone flying near the plant that was downed by electronic warfare, Russia’s Rosenergoatom claimed on Telegram. As a result, the agency said it hit the cooling tower of the No. 6 reactor and exploded upon impact. These structures are generally built to withstand light aircraft impacts
“There is no destruction or casualties; however, a dark mark remained on the cooling tower from the consequences of the detonation,” Rosenergoatom stated. “The safety of the nuclear power plant operation is ensured, the radiation background at the industrial site of the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant and the adjacent territory has not changed and corresponds to natural background levels. Law enforcement agencies are working at the scene.”………………………………………………………………………………………..
Ukrainian officials have yet to comment on this incident, which took place as Kyiv’s drones frequently attack the Voronezh region. Despite Ukraine’s ongoing campaign against energy facilities in Russia, it is quite likely that this strike was inadvertent. Kyiv has been attacking oil and gas plants, not nuclear ones, though Russia claims it downed a drone in August that caused a fire and temporarily reduced the electrical output at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. However, we can’t tell for sure if either of these strikes was deliberate or not. Russia frequently blames damage from drone strikes on electronic warfare or air defense shootdowns, even if an intended target was hit.
It is also possible that the damage at NNPP was caused by Russian air defenses. These systems can fail, as you can see in the following video [on original] . Russia has also claimed that damage caused by failed air defenses was caused by enemy munitions in the past.
Regardless, as Ukraine develops newer long-range weapons with far larger warheads, even an accidental strike on one of these sites could have far greater consequences. You can read more about one of Ukraine’s newest long-range weapons in our story we published today here.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has yet to comment, but has expressed high concern about drones flying near the South (SNPP) and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi issued warnings about ZNPP. That plant has been operating on backup diesel fuel generators since Sept. 23, after power lines were downed. Ukrainian officials claim Russia cut the lines on purpose, which Russia denies. ZNPP is inactive; however, pumps are needed to keep water cooling reactors so they don’t melt down. The power outage is the longest experienced by ZNPP during this conflict, Grossi stated.
Putin’s UnPeaceful Atom
atomic reactors provide “weapons for the enemy,” serving as pre-deployed weapons of mass destruction.
No atomic reactor anywhere can credibly claim to be immune
The fragility of instrumentation, operational, cooling, spent fuel storage and other vital systems have been amply demonstrated
Karl Grossman – Harvey Wasserman, October 6, 2025, https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/06/putins-unpeaceful-atom/
Russian Dictator Vladimir Putin last week eagerly confirmed that all “Peaceful Atom” nuclear power plants are fair game for military destruction and that the ensuing apocalyptic fall-out is not really his concern.
As Reuters reported, “Putin on Thursday warned Ukraine that it was playing a dangerous game by striking the area near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and suggested that Moscow could retaliate against nuclear plants controlled by Ukraine.”
The six-reactor Zaporizhzhia complex is, noted Reuters “Europe’s largest [and] has been cut off from external power for more than a week and is being cooled by emergency diesel generators.”
Zaporizhzhia was captured by Russian forces in the early days of the 2022 invasion.
The global crisis it now embodies was foreseen 45 years ago by Bennett Ramberg, in his book “Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril.”
Ramberg holds a Ph.D. in international relations and a law degree. He’s been an analyst or consultant to the Nuclear Control Institute, Global Green, Committee to Bridge the Gap and the U.S. Senate and U.S. State Department. He now directs the Global Security Seminar. Published by the University of California Press, his book and a new edition out last year are beyond chilling.
And its grave warnings are playing out in recent years and today.
According to the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission, the Indian Point nuclear reactors, 25 miles north of New York City, were potential targets considered for the September 11 attacks. Between 1984 and 1987, Iraq bombed Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant six times. In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. Air Force bombed three nuclear reactors in Iraq. It gets worse.
As an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists put it last year, “small modular reactors, floating nuclear plants, and microreactors….these emerging technologies elevate concerns that wartime attacks could expose warfighters and civilians to nuclear fallout….Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has already set a dangerous precedent that could sway the course of future wars.”
William Alberque, former director of strategy, technology and arms control of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote in a piece on the website of the London-headquartered organization in 2023 that amidst “The wartime weaponization of nuclear power stations,” the “risks of a nuclear disaster remain high at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as Russia continues to threaten the health and safety of the entire region through its reckless behaviour.”
In the war on Ukraine, he adds, “a nuclear weapon state has decided that nuclear power reactors are legitimate targets and tools of coercion in war.”
Thus, atomic reactors provide “weapons for the enemy,” serving as pre-deployed weapons of mass destruction.
Amidst yet another billionaire-hyped push for a “Nuclear Renaissance,” atomic power—including large, small, and fusion reactors—has again faltered due to runaway costs and devastating construction delays. All reactors heat the planet at 300 degrees Centigrade, emit radioactive carbon 14, and can’t match flexible demand.
Most importantly, huge breakthroughs in renewables and battery efficiency have made them cheaper, safer, cleaner, faster-to-build, and more flexible, job-producing and reliable than both fossil fuels and atomic energy. In short, they have priced out fossil/nukes. More than 90% of the world’s new energy capacity is now Solartopian, comprised of carbon/heat and waste-free renewables, battery backup-up units and increased efficiency.
But the Ukraine war has now underscored yet another “Peaceful Atom” pitfall known for decades—the threat of a rogue nation turning atomic reactors into weapons of apocalyptic mass terror and destruction.
More than 400 commercial nuclear power plants are now licensed worldwide. There are 94 in the US. The destruction of just one, at Diablo Canyon, California, could send lethal fallout pouring across the entire continental United States, while first turning Los Angeles into a radioactive wasteland.
Putin has not estimated precisely how much radioactive fallout might result from blowing up an atomic reactor. But the war in Ukraine has made it clear that it could be done with a single drone costing less than $1,000.
Putin has asked just one question about such an attack: who will stop me?
The answer could be apocalyptic: no reactor, large or small, is anywhere immune.
When Putin sent troops pouring through Belarus into northern Ukraine in 2022, they quickly assaulted the smoldering remains at Chernobyl, which infamously exploded in 1986. The seething core of Unit Four has been covered with a $2 billion sarcophagus funded by downwind European nations.
The original explosion irradiated much of Europe. Airborne clouds were detected twice passing over the U.S., killing birds in California and irradiating milk in New England.
In “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” published in 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences,” lead author Dr. Alexey Yablokov, (environmental advisor to Russian Presidents Gorbachev and Yeltsin) drew from 5,000 documents. These included health data, radiological surveys, scientific reports, and more. The conclusion was that as of 2004, as a result of Chernobyl’s fall-out, some 985,000 people had died, mainly of cancer. In the two decades since yet more thousands have been stricken.
In 2022, Putin’s invading troops seemed bound to repeat history. They terrorized and tortured Ukrainian technicians tasked to safeguard Chernobyl’s melted core against another explosion.
Tragically, the Russian soldiers camped in nearby woods, exposing themselves to heavily contaminated dust and soil.
On February 14, 2025, a Russian drone severely damaged Chernobyl’s sarcophagus. Had it hit the melted core, another global-scale radiation release could have again contaminated much of the Earth.
Putin has denied responsibility for that attack. However, he has seized the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia. As at Chernobyl, his troops terrorized, tortured and terminated vital Ukrainian staffers, seriously endangering on-going plant safety.
Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are allegedly shut. But cooling water and backup/off-site power vital to keeping the cores and fuel pools from exploding are tenuous at best. Random munitions and at least one drone have hit the plant.
By cutting transmission lines into Ukraine while running one toward Russia, Putin may soon become Earth’s first autocrat to “steal” an atomic power plant.
He’s further threatened to turn any reactor he wants into a de facto weapon of mass radioactive destruction, saving himself the trouble and expense of a Bombs and missiles.
No atomic reactor anywhere can credibly claim to be immune. The fragility of instrumentation, operational, cooling, spent fuel storage and other vital systems have been amply demonstrated at Chernobyl, Fukushima, Chalk River, Fermi, Three Mile Island, Windscale, INEL, Santa Susanna, Khyshtym, and countless other stricken atomic facilities.
Chernobyl has shown the range and killing power of resultant fallout. Japan’s Fukushima, which exploded on March 11, 2011, has since spewed 100 times more radioactive cesium than did the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Its heavily irradiated liquid wastes are still pouring into the Pacific.
Though vehemently denied by the nuclear industry, the death toll from radiation releases at the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown continues to rise.
Meanwhile Ukraine deploys drones to decimate Putin’s oil and gas infrastructure, utterly ravaging Russia’s refineries, storage tanks, pipelines and more.
With his own drones, Putin has made clear he can target any reactor anywhere.
Safe, clean, green renewable energy technology now accounts for more than 90% of the world’s new energy production. No war monger can destroy a city by blowing up a solar panel or tearing down a wind turbine.
Yet Ukraine itself has four reactors on order, offering Putin still more pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction.
Likewise, California’s “anti-Trump” Governor Gavin Newsom keeps running uninsured, hyper-expensive nukes at Diablo Canyon that Putin could drone-hit tomorrow, forever bankrupting California, turning Los Angeles and the downwind nation into a permanent radioactive wasteland.
Deep in the bowels of the Kremlin, the nuclear Stalin is laughing.
Karl Grossman is the author of “Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power.” He is the host of the nationally broadcast TV program “Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman” (www.envirovideo.com)
Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman wrote “Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth,” and co-wrote (with Norman Solomon, Bob Alvarez & Eleanor Waters) “Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation. His Green Grassroots Election Protection is aired via Zoom (www.grassrootsep.org) on most Mondays at 5 p.m. ET.
Harvey Wasserman wrote the books Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and The Peoples Spiral of US History. He helped coin the phrase “No Nukes.” He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition at www.electionprotection2024.org Karl Grossman is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and Power Crazy. He the host of the nationally-aired TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman (www.envirovideo.com)
Is Russia’s Putin gambling with the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear stations?
Russia and Ukraine have traded blame, accusing one another of imperilling the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Aljazeera, By Mansur Mirovalev, 6 Oct 2025
Kyiv, Ukraine – On October 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged that Ukrainian attacks had destroyed a high-voltage transmission line between the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine and Kyiv-controlled areas.
Days earlier, Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russian shelling had cut the plant off from the electricity network.
The mammoth, six-reactor plant – Europe’s largest and known in Ukraine as the ZAES – sits less than 10km (6.2 miles) south of the front line. It has been shut since 2022, generating none of the electricity that once provided up to a fifth of Ukraine’s needs.
But dozens of Moscow-deployed engineers have frantically tried to restart it – so far unsuccessfully. Ukraine has long feared that Russia is trying to connect the power grid and quench a thirst for energy in Crimea and other occupied areas.
Putin purported that the alleged Ukrainian strikes caused a blackout at the plant and that it had to be fuelled by diesel generators.
The latest blackout at the plant is the longest wartime outage of power.
“On the [Ukrainian] side, people should understand that if they play so dangerously, they have an operating nuclear power station on their side,” Putin told a forum in St Petersburg.
‘The radioactivity is so powerful’
In fact, apart from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Ukraine has three operating power stations – as well as the shutdown Chornobyl facility, the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.
“And what prevents us from mirroring [Ukraine’s alleged actions] in response? Let them think about it,” Putin said.
His threat had apparently already been fulfilled a day earlier. Ukraine accused Russia of shelling that damaged the power supply to the colossal protective “sarcophagus” over the Chornobyl station’s Reactor Four that exploded in 1986.
Both the Chornobyl station and the plant in Zaporizhzhia need electricity for their safety systems and, most importantly, for the uninterrupted circulation of water that cools nuclear fuel.
The fuel, thousands of uranium rods that keep emitting heat, are too radioactive to be taken anywhere else.
In Chornobyl, the fuel is spent and submerged in cooling ponds or “dry-stored” in ventilated, secured facilities.
But at the Zaporizhzhia site, the rods are still inside the reactors – and are newer, hotter, and made in the United States…………………………………………………………………………………
The biggest problem is Russia’s failure to hook the plant to the energy grid of occupied regions as Ukrainian forces pin-pointedly destroy the transmission lines Russia is building – along with fuel depots and thermal power stations, he said.
“The Russians are restoring them any way they can, but Ukrainian forces very much prevent the restoration,” the engineer quipped.
Bellona, a Norway-based nuclear monitor, said on October 2 that a “greater danger lies in Moscow’s potential use of the crisis to justify reconnecting the plant to its own grid – portraying itself as the saviour preventing a nuclear disaster”.
Should Moscow do that, the step would only “worsen [the] strategic situation, give Moscow additional leverage, and bring a potential restart closer – a move that, amid ongoing fighting, would itself sharply increase the risk of a nuclear accident,” it said.
Analysts pointed to a deal proposed by US President Donald Trump in March to transfer the plant to US management as a possible solution.
Ukrainian strikes “will go on until Russia makes a peace deal that also includes US control over the ZAES and its operation”, Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s University of Bremen, told Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, in recent weeks, blackouts in Crimea have become unpredictable and distressing, a Crimea local told Al Jazeera…………..
Russia understands that improved power supply is a prerequisite for its efforts to restore occupied Ukrainian regions and conquer more Ukrainian land, said an observer.
Moscow needs the plant to “cover the growing [energy] consumption in the region, considering not just occupied Crimea, but also the occupied areas [above the Sea of] Azov. And also within the context of Russia’s plan to occupy part of the Zaporizhia region,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.
Greenpeace said that its detailed analysis of high-resolution satellite images taken after what Putin alleged were Ukrainian strikes showed that he was bluffing.
“There is no evidence of any military strikes in the area surrounding the pylons and network of power lines in this part of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” the international environmentalist group said on October 1.
The images showed that the power towers remained in position and there were no craters left by explosions around the lines, it said.
Greenpeace concluded that the blackout at the plant is “a deliberate act of sabotage by Russia” whose aim is to “permanently disconnect the plant from the Ukraine grid and connect the nuclear plant to the grid occupied by Russia”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/6/is-russias-putin-gambling-with-the-safety-of-ukraines-nuclear-stations
Kremlin welcomes Trump’s comments to extend nuclear arms pact
The Kremlin has welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments about Russia’s offer to extend the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the United States, saying it raises hope for keeping the pact alive after it expires in February
ByVLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press, October 7, 2025, https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/kremlin-welcomes-trumps-comments-putins-offer-extend-new-126253222
MOSCOW — MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin on Monday welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments about Russia’s offer to extend the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the United States, saying it raises hope for keeping the pact alive after it expires in February.
Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared his readiness to adhere to nuclear arms limits under the 2010 New START arms reduction treaty for one more year, and he urged Washington to follow suit. When asked about the proposal, Trump said Sunday it “sounds like a good idea to me.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed Trump’s statement, noting that “it gives grounds for optimism that the United States will support President Putin’s initiative.”
While offering to extend the New START agreement, Putin said its expiration would be destabilizing and could fuel proliferation of nuclear weapons. He also argued that maintaining limits on nuclear weapons could also be an important step in “creating an atmosphere conducive to substantive strategic dialogue with the U.S.”
The Russian leader reaffirmed the offer Thursday, noting that Russia and the U.S. could use the one-year extension to work on a possible successor pact.
Such an agreement will involve complex talks that could deal with battlefield nuclear weapons and prospective strategic weapons systems that Russia has developed, Putin said.
“We haven’t forgotten about anything that we have planned, the work is ongoing and it will produce results,” he declared at a forum of international foreign policy experts.
He mentioned the longtime U.S. push for including China in any prospective nuclear arms control pact but emphasized that it’s up to Washington to try to persuade Beijing to do so. China has rejected the idea, arguing that its nuclear arsenals are far smaller than those of the U.S. and Russia.
Putin also argued that the nuclear arsenals of NATO members Britain and France should be included in a prospective agreement.
He noted at the forum that some in the U.S. oppose New START’s extension, and “if they don’t need it, we don’t need it either. We feel confident about our nuclear shield.”
Putin’s offer came at a time of heightened tensions between Russia and the West, with concerns rising that fighting in Ukraine could spread beyond its borders.
The New START, signed by then-U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. The pact also stipulates the need for on-site inspections to verify compliance, although inspections were halted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed.
The treaty was originally supposed to expire in 2021 but was extended for five years.
Arms control advocates long have voiced concern about the treaty’s looming expiration and the lack of dialogue to secure a successor deal, warning of the possibility of a new nuclear arms race and the increased risk of a nuclear conflict.
Trump says Putin’s offer on nuclear arms control ‘sounds like a good idea’
By Andrea Shalal, October 6, 2025, Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Chizu Nomiyama, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-says-putins-offer-nuclear-arms-control-sounds-like-good-idea-2025-10-05/
- Summary
- Putin proposed voluntary limit on nuclear arsenals last month
- US-Russian ties strained despite Trump-Putin summit in August
- Putin warned US against sending long-range missiles to Ukraine
WASHINGTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to voluntarily maintain limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons “sounds like a good idea.”
Putin last month offered to voluntarily maintain limits capping the size of the world’s two biggest nuclear arsenals set out in the 2010 New START accord, which expires in February, if the U.S. does the same.
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House, when asked about Putin’s offer.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia last week had said Moscow was still waiting for Trump to respond to Putin’s offer to voluntarily maintain the limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons once a key arms control treaty expires.
Any agreement on continuing to limit nuclear arms would stand in contrast to rising tensions between the United States and Russia since Trump and Putin met in Alaska in mid-August given reported incursions of Russian drones into NATO airspace.
Speaking in a video clip released on Sunday, Putin warned that a decision by the United States to supply long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for strikes deep into Russia would destroy Moscow’s relationship with Washington.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance said last month that Washington was considering a Ukrainian request to obtain missiles that could strike deep into Russia, including Moscow, though it is unclear if a final decision has been made.
Trump, who has expressed disappointment in Putin for not moving to end the war in Ukraine, was not asked directly on Sunday about the prospect of supplying Tomahawks to Ukraine.
“This will lead to the destruction of our relations, or at least the positive trends that have emerged in these relations,” Putin said in a video clip released on Sunday by Russian state television reporter Pavel Zarubin.
One U.S. official and three other sources told Reuters that the Trump administration’s desire to send long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine may not be viable because current inventories are committed to the U.S. Navy and other uses.
Trump is touring a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, the George H.W. Bush, off the coast of Virginia on Sunday, and will give a speech on a second carrier, the Harry S. Truman, later.
Tomahawk cruise missiles have a range of 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles). If Ukraine got the missiles, the Kremlin and all of European Russia would be within target.
Leah McGrath Goodman, Tony Blair and issues on torture (with added radiation)
Published by arclight2011- date 15 Sep 2012 -nuclear-news.net
[…]
Accusations: Despite the mockery of the film Borat, leaked U.S. cables suggest the country was undemocratic and used torture in detention
Other dignitaries at the meeting included former Italian Prime Minister and ex-EU Commission President
Romano Prodi. Mr Mittal’s employees in Kazakhstan have accused him of ‘slave labour’ conditions after a series of coal mining accidents between 2004 and 2007 which led to 91 deaths.
[…]
Last week a senior adviser to the Kazakh president said that Mr Blair had opened an office in the capital.Presidential adviser Yermukhamet Yertysbayev said: ‘A large working group is here and, to my knowledge, it has already opened Tony Blair’s permanent office in Astana.’
It was reported last week that Mr Blair had secured an £8 million deal to clean up the image of Kazakhstan.
[…]
Mr Blair also visited Kazakhstan in 2008, and in 2003 Lord Levy went there to help UK firms win contracts.
[…]
Max Keiser talks to investigative journalist and author, Leah McGrath Goodman about her being banned from the UK for reporting on the Jersey sex and murder scandal. They discuss the $5 billion per square mile in laundered money that means Jersey rises, while Switzerland sinks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA_aVZrR5NI&feature=player_detailpage#t=749s
And as well as protecting the guilty child sex/torturers/murderers of the island of Jersey I believe that they are also protecting the tax dodgers from any association.. its just good PR!
FORMER Prime Minister Tony Blair was reportedly involved in helping to keep alive the world’s biggest takeover by Jersey-incorporated commodities trader Glencore of mining company Xstrata.
11/September/2012
[…]
Mr Blair was said to have attended a meeting at Claridge’s Hotel in London towards the end of last week which led to the Qatari Sovereign wealth fund supporting a final revised bid from Glencore for its shareholding. Continue reading
Russian nuclear submarine: Fears as K-159 nuke vessel, that sank over 20 years ago, rusty and resting on seabed with highly radioactive fuel
By Isabella Boneham, Reporter, https://www.nationalworld.com/news/world/russian-nuclear-submarine-fears-as-k-159-nuke-vessel-that-sank-years-ago-resting-on-seabed-5337748
The decommissioned Soviet nuclear submarine K-159 is still at the bottom of the Barents Sea after sinking more than 20 years ago.
In August 2003, the K-159 sank in a storm while being towed for scrapping. The submarine, which had been decommissioned since 1989, was in poor condition and was not defueled.
The submarine lies at a depth of about 246 meters in Russian territorial waters, near the entrance to the Kola Bay. Russia was soon to announce that the sub should be lifted, although it would be challenging due to the outer hull’s rusty conditions.
But nothing happened and Europe-Russia ties turned gradually colder. Researchers have since then monitored the wreck, fearing leakages of radioactivity from the two old nuclear reactors onboard could contaminate the important fishing grounds in the Barents Sea.
The K-159 still contains about 800 kg of spent nuclear fuel in its two reactors, posing a long-term environmental risk. The rusty hull is in a state of advanced corrosion, increasing the chance of future radioactive leaks.
A joint Norwegian-Russian expedition examined the site in 2014 and concluded that no leakage has so far occurred from the reactors to the surrounding marine environment. According to the Barents Observer, Lithuania-based nuclear expert Dmitry Gorchakov with the Bellona Environmental Transparency Center is worried.
He said: “There is a possibility of leaks, of course. Especially since K-159 was not prepared for flooding”. He underlined that so far, to his knowledge, “no leaks have been found.”
Dmitry Gorchakov says it one day eventually will be necessary to bring up the K-159. However, plans have been put on hold due to the Russia-Ukraine war.
He said: “In the current conditions of isolation, it is unlikely Russia will be able to conduct such an operation alone. There is no necessary equipment, and there may not be money for this in the budget. I think in the coming years they will depict preparations for the lift, but nothing more”.
Thomas Nilsen, editor of The Barents Observer online newspaper, previously described the submarines as a “Chernobyl in slow motion on the seabed”. In a BBC report, Ingar Amundsen, head of international nuclear safety at the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, agreed that it is a question of when, not if, the sunken submarines will contaminate the waters if left as they are.
Russian nuclear submarine surfaces near UK territory in ‘explosive hazard’
A Russian nuclear-powered submarine has been forced to surface in the Strait of Gibraltar after suffering a serious leak in its fuel system, with the vessel becoming an explosive hazard
William Morgan Reporter, Mirror, UK, 30 Sep 2025
International naval forces have been put on high alert following a ‘serious accident’ involving a Russian nuclear submarine, which was compelled to surface near UK waters over the weekend.
Further details have come to light about the incident in the Strait of Gibraltar, where the 74-metre missile-laden Novorossiysk became an “explosive hazard” after suffering a significant leak in its fuel system. Russian Telegram channels painted a grim picture of the situation on board as the stealth sub’s hull filled with diesel.
Despite the critical nature of the diesel-electric powered ship’s fuel delivery system, military bloggers alleged that no one on board had the training to rectify the problem and that there were no spare parts available. With the potentially nuclear-armed sub at risk of exploding in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, concerns were raised that the crew might start discharging diesel into the Mediterranean.
While the Russian Navy has yet to confirm the incident, open source ship-tracking software and eyewitnesses on the ground have observed a concerted effort from various military powers to keep tabs on the struggling submarine, which has moved west towards the Atlantic in the days since it was forced to surface………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russian-nuclear-submarine-surfaces-near-35986816
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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