Chernobyl shelter’s drone damage includes 330 openings in outer cladding.
World Nuclear News 9th May 2025
The International Atomic Energy Agency has outlined the scale of the damage caused by a drone strike and subsequent fires to the giant shelter built over the ruins of Chernobyl’s unit 4.
The agency said that investigations continue to determine the extent of the damage sustained by the arch-shaped New Safe Confinement (NSC) shelter following the drone strike on 14 February.
The impact caused a 15-square-metre hole in the external cladding of the arch, with further damage to a wider area of about 200-square-metres, as well as to some joints and bolts. It took about three weeks to fully extinguish smouldering fires in the insulation layers of the shelter.
n its update on the situation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said: “It took several weeks to completely extinguish the fires caused by the strike. The emergency work resulted in approximately 330 openings in the outer cladding of the NSC arch, each with an average size of 30-50 cm.
“According to information provided to the IAEA team at the site, a preliminary assessment of the physical integrity of the large arch-shaped building identified extensive damage, for example to the stainless-steel panels of the outer cladding, insulation materials as well as to a large part of the membrane – located between the layers of insulation materials – that keep out water, moisture and air.”
The main crane system, including the maintenance garage area, was damaged and it is not currently operational, the IAEA said. The heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems are functional but have not been in service since the strike. Radiation and other monitoring systems remain functional, the IAEA said. There has been no increase in radiation levels at any time during or since the drone strike.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said: “We are gradually getting a more complete picture of the severe damage caused by the drone strike. It will take both considerable time and money to repair all of it.”
…………………………………………………………………………………The New Safe Confinement was financed via the Chernobyl Shelter Fund which was run by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It received EUR1.6 billion (USD1.7 billion) from 45 donor countries and the EBRD provided EUR480 million of its own resources.
On 4 March the EBRD allocated EUR400,000 from the administrative budget of the continuing fund for specialist-led damage assessment……………………………..https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chernobyl-shelters-drone-damage-includes-330-openings-in-outer-cladding
Russian drone strike caused tens of millions worth of damage to Chornobyl
Attack damaged €1.5bn containment structure over nuclear reactor with repair costs likely to be borne by western governments
Russian drone strike caused tens of millions worth of damage to Chornobyl
Attack damaged €1.5bn containment structure over nuclear reactor with repair costs likely to be borne by western governments
Dan Sabbagh in Chornobyl. Photography by Julia KochetovaWed 7 May 2025
A Russian Shahed drone costing up to £75,000 is estimated to have inflicted tens of millions worth of damage to the site of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, according to initial assessments and engineering experts.
The cost of a full fix is likely to be borne by western governments including the UK, because initial estimates are that a complete repair will cost more than the €25m available in a special international contingency fund.
The strike in mid February did not cause an immediate radiological risk, but it significantly damaged the €1.5bn containment structure built in 2017 to encase the destroyed reactor and is likely to take months if not years to completely repair.
The 110-metre high steel structure at Chornobyl was hit before 2am on 14 February, with sensors registering “something like a 6 to 7 magnitude earthquake,” according to Serhiy Bokov, the chief engineer on duty. “But we clearly understood it wasn’t that,” he said.
The attack – quickly concluded to be caused by a drone flying below at a level where it could not be detected by radar – punctured a 15-sq-metre hole in the outer roof. It also caused a particularly damaging, complex smouldering fire to the inner cladding of the structure that took over a fortnight to put out.
Consisting of two double arches and longer than two jumbo jets, the New Safe Confinement (NSC) was completed in 2017 to secure the hastily built, unstable Soviet-era sarcophagus, which covers over Chornobyl’s ill-fated reactor number four, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in April 1986.
But the attack in February has rendered the sarcophagus open to the elements again, meaning that radioactive dust could get out and rainwater in, though the country’s environmental protection ministry says “the radiation background is currently within normal level and is under constant control”.
More significantly, the confinement structure is now more vulnerable in the longer term to rusting due to greater exposure to the elements and damage to the cladding. Two hundred small boreholes were also drilled into the structure in the effort to douse the cladding fire with water.
“Not fixing it is not an option,” said Eric Schmieman, an American engineer who worked on the design and build of the Chornobyl shelter for 15 years. A complete repair, he said would “cost a minimum of tens of millions of dollars and it could easily go to hundreds of millions” with the repairs taking “months to years,” he added.
Previously the shelter was intended to have a 100-year design life, allowing time to decommission the sarcophagus and nuclear waste below, but this is now in doubt without it being repaired, Schmieman added. Unlike other large metal structures, such as the Eiffel Tower, it was never possible to repaint it to prevent corrosion.
Below the sarcophagus lies a highly radioactive lava like mass, a mix of 200 tonnes of uranium from Chornobyl reactor number four and 5,000 tonnes of sand, lead and boric acid dropped on to the site by Soviet helicopters in the immediate aftermath of the disaster caused by the reactor going out of control.
A more detailed impact assessment is expected to be released in May, but the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which funded the building of the shelter and is involved in the post bombing analysis, said “it is clear that the attack has caused significant damage”.
Other sources, familiar with the assessment exercise, told the Guardian that Schmieman’s estimates appeared correct. Though the EBRD holds €25m in funds to allow for emergency work, it said “significantly more funding is required” to tackle long-term decommissioning challenges thrown up by the incident…………………………………………………
Further cash for repairs is most likely to come from western governments. Twenty-six countries contributed to the cost of the original shelter, including the US, UK, France, Germany and even Russia – of which the vast steel arch structure cost €1.5bn out of a total €2.1bn fund. Others also made donations, including Turkey.
Home to the remains of a nuclear reactor that went out of control and exploded in April 1986, the Chornobyl site is seven miles from the border with Russia’s ally Belarus. It was occupied by Russian soldiers trying to capture Kyiv in February 2022, and has remained on the frontline after Ukraine regained it that April……………………………………………….
Remotely operated cranes hanging from the confinement shelter were intended to dismantle the sarcophagus and nuclear material below, and the strike hit a point near the maintenance garage Bokov said. That too may impair the plans to gradually dismantle and decommission the disaster site below……………………………….. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/07/russian-drone-strike-caused-tens-of-millions-worth-of-damage-to-chornobyl
Zaporizhzhia: Hurdle or catalyst for a peace deal in Ukraine?
May 6, 2025, Henry Sokolski , https://npolicy.org/zaporizhzhia-hurdle-or-catalyst-for-a-peace-deal-in-ukraine/
In all the peace proposals the United States, Russia, Europe, and Ukraine have made public, one item always shows up: the reopening of the damaged six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Washington wants to rebuild and operate it, Moscow insists the plant is theirs, and Kyiv says that it must remain Ukrainian. But, it will be to restart the plant.
Russia insists it can get at least one of the reactors up and running within several months. The United States has no timeline. Ukraine says, even with a solid peace and full control over the plant, bringing all six reactors back online would still take two years or more. No one has ventured how much any of this would cost.
And, there are additional challenges. Russia destroyed the Kakhovka Dam upstream of the plant. Now, what would be required to assure a steady clean supply of cooling water for the reactors? The Russians also laid mines around the plant; the area is also laced with unexploded ordnance. How will these munitions be neutralized? Who will do it? The Russians have looted and damaged much of the plant’s control equipment. How will it be repaired and replaced? Who will certify that the work has been done properly? The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission? The Ukrainian State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate? Rosatom?
More than 75 percent of Zaporizhzhia’s nuclear staff no longer work at the plant. Can they be replaced? Who will replace them? Then, there’s the challenge of rebuilding all of the damaged power lines and transformers necessary to export any electricity from the site. Where will the electricity be sent? Ukraine? The European Union? Russian territories? Who will pay for all of this work? Who will be held responsible if there are accidents? Who will defend the plant against future attacks? The United States? Ukraine? Russia? The EU?
There are even more questions than these. But as I make clear in the attached piece, we need to get the answers if we want the situation with Zaporizhzhia to be anything other than a hurdle to reaching any lasting peace.
……… Power for whom and at what cost? Even if the Zaporizhzhia reactors could be safely restarted, the problem of distributing the plant’s power remains. Before the war, Zaporizhzhia helped feed Ukraine’s electrical grid and exported surplus power to Europe. Now, the infrastructure connecting the plant to customers is shattered. Transmission lines must be rebuilt. Substations and transformers need replacement. Technical adjustments will need to be made and agreements negotiated over where the electricity will go and how: western Europe, southern Ukraine, or to Russian-controlled territories?
Another question is who will pay for all this work? Will seized Russian assets foot the bill? Or will it be European Reconstruction Bank funds? What of US investment, taxpayer funds, and any private entity potentially interested in chipping in? Once funds are allocated, who would receive the profits, if any, or be responsible for the losses? Who would assume responsibility for possible accidents and damage to property beyond the plant’s site? And, finally, who will bear the costs of ensuring the plant’s security so that its reactors do not become again the targets of future attacks? None of this is yet clear.
As Ukraine, the United States, and Russia have all made refurbishing and operating Zaporizhzhia a condition for peace, dodging these questions is a prescription for mischief. Without clear answers, resurrecting Zaporizhzhia could become more of an obstacle to than a catalyst for peace.
Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, Virginia, served as Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy at the Pentagon (1989-93), and is author of China, Russia and the Coming Cool War (2024).
US-Ukraine minerals deal ‘hides secret agreements’ – Ukrainian MP
2 May 25 https://www.rt.com/news/616662-ukraine-us-deal-secret-agreements/
Separate provisions outline Kiev’s “indefinite obligations” and bypass parliamentary ratification, Irina Gerashchenko has claimed.
The US-Ukraine minerals agreement announced this week “hides” details of Kiev’s “indefinite obligations” to Washington, a Ukrainian lawmaker has claimed.
In a Facebook post on Friday, Irina Gerashchenko, a member of European Solidarity party said the deal includes two “secret,” supplementary documents that will not be subject to parliamentary ratification.
The minerals deal reportedly grants the US preferential access to Ukrainian mining projects in exchange for assistance with an investment fund to support the country’s reconstruction. Initially portrayed by Washington as repayment forbears of military support – estimated at $350 billion by President Donald Trump – the final text, published on Thursday by the Ukrainian government, states that only future aid will count toward US contributions to the fund.
Gerashchenko claimed however that instead of one agreement, the US and Ukraine signed three.
“The Zelensky government has not provided deputies and society with all the agreements signed in the US, which, as it turned out, are three, not one,” she wrote. “Meanwhile, they want to ratify only one framework document in the Verkhovna Rada. Others are labeled ‘implementation documents,’ despite the fact that it is in these two secret agreements that all the technical details of indefinite Ukrainian obligations are hidden.”
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal “avoided” commenting on the two documents and the lack of security guarantees in the published agreement – reportedly a key point of contention during negotiations – Gerashchenko told the country’s parliament on Friday.
The claim has raised questions among Ukrainian lawmakers and the public on the actual scope of the agreement. MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak claimed on Telegram that, when pressed, Shmigal acknowledged the two additional documents but downplayed them as “technical” and exempt from ratification. The texts “must be signed after the ratification” of the main agreement, Shmigal claimed, noting that lawmakers would see them when the Ukrainian negotiating team returns from the US next week.
Western media reports have also noted the existence of additional documents and claimed that a last-minute dispute arose when Washington demanded Kiev sign all three. Ukrainian officials reportedly argued they could not sign the annexes until the main agreement was ratified in Parliament. Later reports suggested all three documents were ultimately signed.
Further details about the contents of the supplementary documents have not been publicly released, and the Ukrainian government has not issued an official statement addressing their existence or content.
For second time in 3 years Zelensky sabotages Ukraine war peace deal.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 30 Apr 25
Does Ukraine President Zelensky enjoy watching his citizens die needlessly in a US provoked war he could have ended twice?
Zelensky helped ensure Russia would invade February 22, 2022 by pushing NATO membership for Ukraine and massing 60,000 elite troops on the Donbas border to finish off the Russian leaning Donbas Ukrainians seeking independence from Kyiv destroying their culture along with their lives.
But Zelensky sensibly negotiated a peace agreement with Russia in the first two months (Istanbul Agreement) that would have ended the war with no loss of Ukraine territory albeit with no Ukraine NATO membership and independence for the beleaguered Donbas Ukrainians. That was statesmanship of the highest order.
But the US and UK saw a golden opportunity to weaken Russia if not change out the Vladimir Putin regime. What to do? Got it. Send US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Kyiv to disabuse Zelensky of making peace. Hey, with a couple of hundred billions in US/NATO weapons but no soldiers, you can win Zelensky and go out the George Washington of Ukraine..
The result? Three years on Ukraine is largely destroyed with millions fled, over a hundred thousand casualties, 45,000 square miles gone forever and a shattered economy.
But new sheriff in town Trump brokered a new peace deal which would have ended the war with no further casualties or lost territory, Astonishingly, Zelensky rejected it again, this time of his own free will. He cited both his desire to require Crimea, lost 5 years before he became president, and his goal of Ukraine joining NATO.
So despite a 3 day Russian truce in in the offing over its May celebration of its WWII victory, the dying soldiers and expanding Russian buffer zone in Ukraine to prevent further long range Ukrainian missile attacks will go on till Ukraine simply collapses.
Maybe Zelensky has a nationwide death wish. Maybe he’s delusional or too stupid to realize his leading Ukraine to certain destruction. Or maybe it’s simply his way of telling the US and UK that he’s capable of blowing up a sensible peace agreement all by himself.
Covering up Ukrainian Nazis is nothing new – the Canadians have been doing it for almost eighty years
Ian Proud, April 29, 2025. https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/04/29/covering-up-ukrainian-nazis-nothing-new-canadians-have-been-doing-it-for-almost-eighty-years/
A number of topics remain taboo in discussing the war in Ukraine. Busification, Zelensky’s democratic mandate, Ukraine’s casualty numbers and anything suggesting that Ukraine cannot win are all off limits. Likewise the problem of alleged neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
One of the most embarrassing episodes since the Ukraine war started in 2022, was when Yaroslav Hunka, was given two standing ovations in the Canadian House of Commons public gallery by MPs during the visit of President Zelensky in 2023. Hunka has been accused by Russia of genocide, because of his alleged involvement in the Huta Pieniacka massacre of February 28 1944 in which more than 500 ethnic Poles were murdered in a village, in what is now western Ukraine. Hunka was a member of the SS Galicia Division, a mostly Ukrainian unit of the Waffen SS, which Commissions in Germany and Poland later found guilty of war crimes.
This was shocking because it opened the lid on a topic of conversation that has been largely silenced by the western mainstream media since the beginning of the war: Ukraine’s contemporary challenge of far-right ultranationalism. But the Hunka case also illustrates how western authorities airbrushed discussion of nazis in Ukraine after World War II too.
On 13 July 1948 the British Commonwealth Relations Office, what is now part of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, sent a telegram to Commonwealth governments, proposing an end to Nazi war crimes trials in the British zone of Germany. “Punishment of war crimes is more a matter of discouraging future generations than of meting out retribution to every guilty individual… it is now necessary to dispose of the past as soon as possible.”
After the conclusion of the Nuremberg War Trials in 1946 the western world faced a new enemy in the Soviet Union. Limited security resources in cash-strapped Albion and its colonies were re-deployed to uncover suspected Soviet agents and Communists, rather than to identify and track down lower-order Nazi war criminals.
Around this time, many Ukrainians fled the Soviet Union to settle in Canada. In the thirty-year period after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Ukrainian population in Canada almost doubled, from 300,000 to almost 600,000 people. While most of them, I am sure, would not have been Nazi collaborators, some, undoubtedly, were. They were joined by lesser numbers of Latvians, Hungarians, Slovaks and others.
Within that exodus would have been so-called “lesser” war criminals; persons who had organised the transportation of Jews, Slavs, gypsies and homosexuals to death camps, acted as informers, committed murders, or become involved in war crimes as other ranks and non-commissioned officers in death squads. They were the lower echelon collaborators, acting as the instruments of the genocide initiated by the Nazis.
Yet, following the British instruction, Canada progressively relaxed its immigration policy between 1950 and 1962, steadily removing restrictions against the entry of German nazis and non-German members of German military units like the SS Galicia Division.
However, in 1984 the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote a letter to the Canadian government claiming to have obtained evidence that the ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele had applied for a landed immigrant visa to Canada in 1962. Though this proved to be incorrect, it caused such outrage among Canada’s Jewish community that a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada was established in 1985.
Known as the Deschênes Commission, it uncovered a list of 774 persons who had allegedly entered Canada and who required further investigation. Of that list, only 28 underwent serious investigation and trial.
Michael Pawlowski, accused of murdering 410 Jews and 80 non-Jewish Poles in Belarus in 1942, was acquitted as judges blocked the prosecution from gathering evidence in the Soviet Union.
Stephen Reistetter of Slovakia was not tried for allegations that he kidnapped 3000 Jews to have them sent to Nazi death camps while serving in the Hlinka party, a far right clerical-fascist movement with Nazi leanings. His case fell apart because a witness died.
Erich Tobias, was accused of involvement in the execution of Latvian Jews but died before his case went to court.
By 1995, with no convictions for war crimes having been secured, the Canadian Justice Department cut the size of its war crimes unit from 24 to 11 people. In the absence of criminal prosecutions, the Canadian Government tried civil proceedings to revoke citizenship from alleged war criminals.
Wasily Bogutin collaborated with the Nazi occupation forces in the town of Selidovo, in Donetsk, and was personally and directly involved in effecting the roundup of young persons for forced labour in Germany. In February 1998, Judge McKeown, of the Trial Division of the Federal Court, found that Bogutin had concealed his role in war crimes, but he died before he could be extradited.
Joseph Nemsila, who commanded a Slovak unit that sent civilians to Auschwitz died in 1997 after a decision not to revoke citizenship was overturned, but death prevented exportation.
In only 7 cases was order made for the suspect to be extradited or exported. This included Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary, accused of involvement in the confinement of thousands of Hungarian Jews and their subsequent deportation to death camps. In July 1997, just before his trial was to begin, he decided not to oppose the loss of his citizenship and voluntarily left the country.
Vladimir Katriuk was accused of having taken part in the Khatyn Massacre in Belarus and Wasyl Odnynsky, a guard at SS labour camps at Trawniki and Poniaka. Moves were made to revoke their citizenship, but they were allowed to remain in Canada until all court proceedings were lifted in 2007.
Progress in prosecuting alleged war criminals in Canada was always slow, often held up by foot-dragging by often reluctant judges, and a refusal to allow for the gathering of evidence in the Soviet Union.
Today, the media and Jewish groups still pressure the Canadian government to reveal the names of all of the 774 persons considered by the 1985 Deschênes Commission with so far little success.
An American academic recently discovered what is believed to be a similar list of 700 suspects which included Volodymyr Kubiovych, a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator who helped organize the SS Galicia division and who was editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine compiled at the University of Alberta. A photograph of a parade in Lviv, Ukraine, in July, 1943, shows Mr. Kubiovych making a Nazi salute alongside Otto Wächter, a senior member of the SS who also served as governor of Galicia and Krakow.
Yaroslav Hunka was not on that list, raising questions about how many Nazi collaborators in Canada were never discovered.
I don’t think that Ukraine today is a Nazi society and, even at its high watermark, the Svoboda party only garnered 10% of the national vote. But ultranationalism is a major problem, particularly in the west of Ukraine, in that area known as Galicia during World War II. And the refusal of western governments to acknowledge the issue of ultranationalism in Ukraine or speak out means that we are turning a blind eye once more to activity that we would never tolerate in our own countries.
Chernobyl’s Hidden Impact: Disinformation and Nuclear Politics
And yes it is oxymoronic to have the same agency being responsible for safety and promotion of nuclear power
Chernobyl is not the past.
every nuclear power plant ever built assumes there will never be a war on the site.
Chernobyl explosion was “perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.” According to Mikhail Gorbachev who was the last leader of the Soviet Union and was in power during the meltdown. But perhaps the more important lesson from the Chernobyl catastophe is that disinformation can kill you. It is important to remember that the largest and most deadly nuclear accident in the world was not even reported initially by the secretive and corrupt Soviet Union. It was not until 2 days after the meltdown that the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden detected the radiation and forced the Soviets to admit there had been an accident. Forsmark is 1100 km from Chernobyl.
Disinformation about Chernobyl is not confined to the Soviet Union, western nations and especially the UN played a critical role in down playing and distorting information about the effects of the disaster. This is most obvious in the fatality estimates associated with the catastrophe.
In 1959, the powerful UN agency responsible for both promoting and monitoring nuclear power, the IAEA, signed an agreement with the UN’s health monitoring agency, WHO, that restricted them from reporting on nuclear accidents. And as part of the western public relations cover up, 4 months after the meltdown the then general director of the IAEA, Hans Blix, would affirm: “The world could tolerate a nuclear accident as serious as Chernobyl every year.” WHO was blocked from releasing any independent Chernobyl studies and ultimately the IAEA (with WHO) would officially report that there were only between 4000 to 9000 deaths. [And yes it is oxymoronic to have the same agency being responsible for safety and promotion of nuclear power.]
Consensus is not your friend. There have been many scientific studies of the affects of Chernobyl. Greenpeace did an anthology of these studies at the 25th anniversary and estimated that at least 93,000 people will have died and the actual total is likely well be over 200,000 premature deaths. Why the big difference between the UN’s official tally and independent scientists? The answer is consensus. The IAEA has representatives from pro-nuclear states on it’s Chernobyl Forum, they release their reports operating by consensus and those invested in nuclear energy have a strong interest in down playing the effects of accidents. Independent scientists have also found radiation levels in the exclusion zone to be over three times higher than the IAEA reports.
How effective is this western mis/disinformation campaign? Check out Wikipedia or ask any AI. You will quickly find the IAEAs 4000 person fatality rate. Depending on the source more accurate information is either buried or not revealed in your first responses. Lots of people on the nuclear payrolls have put a bunch of effort into minimizing the impact of all nuclear accidents. This is not a (known) conspiracy, per se, but rather contemporary industrial capitalism functioning as designed. But perhaps more revealing is that almost no mainstream news sources are covering this years 39th anniversary. Far more important in our attention economy is that Trump is going to the Pope’s funeral and we are arresting judges in the US.
Chernobyl is not the past. In February of this year a relatively low cost attack drone blew a hole in the second $1.7 billion Chernobyl sarcophagus. The fire from this attack burned for 3 weeks, requiring technicians to make further holes in the exterior shell in a high stakes game of “nuclear whack a mole”
“We did a lot of safety analysis, considering a lot of bad things that could happen,” said a senior technical adviser on the project. “We considered earthquakes, tornadoes, heavy winds, 100-year snowfalls, all kinds of things. We didn’t consider acts of war.”
It is worth pointing out that every nuclear power plant ever built assumes there will never be a war on the site. Assuming otherwise would be yet another in the long list of reasons why nuclear power should not be considered or continued. Other major problems with civil nuclear power include: subsidized insurance, proliferation risks, uneconomic construction and operation, perverse effects on avoiding climate disruption and the threat to democracy. The total cost of the Cheronbyl accident has been estimated at $700 billion which is about 5 times the Ukraines average GDP for the last 10 years.
The only good nuclear news on this anniversary is the complexity of nuclear power plants combined with the previous globalization of the nuclear construction and fuel supply chain mean that Trump’s tariffs may put the breaks on any new nuclear construction in the US. Or perhaps more sadly, these Trump taxes will just increase the already ridiculous price of nuclear power to both taxpayers and ratepayers.
Situation unstable: IAEA says shots were heard at Zaporizhzhia power plant
Artur Kryzhnyi — Friday, 25 April 2025,
IAEA experts at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant heard loud gunshots on 23 April near the main administrative building where their office is located.
Source: IAEA press service
Details: In addition, the IAEA team has heard explosions and gunshots at different distances from the plant almost every day over the past week.
“What once seemed almost unthinkable – evidence of hostilities near a large nuclear facility – has become an almost daily occurrence and a familiar part of life at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. From a nuclear safety point of view, this is certainly an unstable situation,” said IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi.
Despite the regular sounds of fighting, IAEA experts continue to conduct inspections at the plant to monitor and assess the state of nuclear safety and security…………….
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the proposal for US control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant raises many questions that are difficult to resolve.
Ukrainska Pravda 25th April 2025
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/04/25/7509136/
On Chernobyl Disaster Anniversary, Repairing Damaged Shield Poses ‘Enormous Challenge’
April 26, 2025 ,By RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Stuart Greer and Oleh Haliv, https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-anniversary-russia/33397012.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawJ6SqxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE3RG9aSkhxNzhYNndQMGFFAR4zqGfz15XQZ8lgJtOhc7sSWq1aQn8M_cCUwEQ8_iwc4gjbpLOjfLqY7ftG6g_aem_uTOf_f4ZB8kKArzvpkNfYQ
As Ukraine marks the 39th anniversary of the world’s worst civilian nuclear accident at the Chernobyl power plant, engineers are struggling to find ways to repair the complex’s protective shield more than two months after a Russian drone left a large hole in the structure.
The massive steel dome was designed to protect and confine the radioactive remains of crippled reactor number four that exploded when a routine safety test went wrong on April 26, 1986.
Radiation levels outside the punctured shield have stayed normal since the drone attack, officials say.
But sealing the hole hasn’t been possible because it sits above the crumbling sarcophagus that encases radioactive debris from the reactor.
“How can you fix a roof space where the higher you go up in the building, the higher the radiation levels? They’re so high next to the actual sarcophagus, the reactor unit, that you can’t work above it,” says Shaun Burnie, a nuclear expert with Greenpeace.
Burnie was part of a Greenpeace team invited to Chernobyl to inspect the damage shortly after the February 14 drone strike which Moscow denied it was responsible for.
“It’s a very, very serious, enormous challenge for Ukraine at a time when it’s faced with so many other challenges, and so the international community really needs to step in and support.” says Burnie.
It took emergency crews three weeks to locate and extinguish fires that spread and smoldered through the membrane of the shield’s outer shell.
The new confinement structure was completed in 2019 as part of a $2.2 billion international project involving 45 countries. The temporary rail track used to install it over the reactor has since been dismantled, meaning the massive structure can’t be moved safely to the side for repairs.
The United Nations predicted the shield would “make the reactor complex stable and environmentally safe for the next 100 years.”
But long-term plans to safely dismantle the sarcophagus to allow the removal of radioactive ruins of the reactor are no longer possible following damage to the shield, according to Dmytro Humeniuk, an expert from Ukraine’s State Scientific and Technical Center for Nuclear and Radiation Safety.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has earmarked $450,000 to assess the drone damage to the confinement structure.
Ukrainian Environment Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk estimates the preliminary results of the analysis should be completed sometime in May.
Repairs to the shield will be costly and Ukraine will need significant funding from international donors, predicts Burnie.
“They have to come up with a longer-term plan, which will be very extensive, very complicated, and potentially horrendously expensive.”
Kiev and its backers reject key aspects of Trump’s peace plan – Reuters
25 Apr 25, https://www.rt.com/news/616288-reuters-trump-peace-plan/
The counteroffer is “on the table” of the American president, Vladimir Zelensky has stated
Kiev and its European backers have turned down President Donald Trump’s reported peace plan for the Ukraine conflict in several significant respects, according to a report by Reuters, citing the full texts of the US proposal and the response.
Washington tabled a proposed deal to end hostilities between Kiev and Moscow during a meeting in Paris on Thursday last week. A follow-up meeting took place in London on Wednesday, at which Ukrainian officials and their NATO European counterparts drafted counterproposal.
The London talks were downgraded at the last minute after Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky publicly rejected key American suggestions. He declared on Thursday that the European-backed “strategy” was now “on President Trump’s table.”
Having examined the drafts “in full and explicit detail” on Friday, Reuters identified four critical areas of disagreement.
The US is proposing Washington’s formal recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea — the former Ukrainian region that voted to join Russia following the 2014 Western-backed armed coup in Kiev — and a cessation of hostilities along the current frontline.
Kiev and its European backers are only willing to discuss territorial issues after a ceasefire has been established.
The US document offers a “robust security guarantee” for Ukraine from willing nations, according to Reuters. The Euro-proposal rival proposal insists that no restrictions be placed on Ukraine’s military, including the deployment of foreign troops on its territory, and calls for the US to provide NATO-like protection to Ukraine.
Russia demands Ukraine remains neutral and insists that it will not accept any NATO troop presence, or troops from bloc members as part of a coalition, in the country.
Reuters reported that the US is advocating for the removal of restrictions imposed on Russia since 2014, while Kiev and the Europeans propose a “gradual easing of sanctions after a sustainable peace is achieved,” paired with a threat of snapback measures for non-compliance.
The US framework includes mentions of financial compensation for Ukraine, but lacks specifics. The Kiev-backed counterproposal identifies frozen Russian assets in Western countries as a source for such payments, according to Reuters. Russia has labeled the seizure of its funds illegal and views any use of these assets to support Ukraine as “theft.”
Members of the Trump administration have blasted Zelensky for attempting to negotiate a deal through the media rather than in confidential discussions. The US president has warned that he may withdraw from his mediation efforts altogether if either party stalls progress.
Kursk Region fully liberated from Ukrainians – Putin
Rt.com, 26 Apr, 2025
Kiev’s gamble to invade Russia has ended up in an unmitigated disaster, the president has said.
The Russian military has completely liberated the border Kursk Region from Ukrainian forces, President Vladimir Putin has said after being briefed on the battlefield situation by General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov.
In a video address shared by the Kremlin on Saturday, Putin thanked Russian service members “who took part in defeating the neo-Nazi groups” that invaded the region last summer.
“The Kiev regime’s adventure has completely failed, and the huge losses suffered by the enemy, including among the most combat-ready, trained and equipped, including by Western models of equipment… will certainly be reflected along the entire line of combat contact,” he said.
According to Putin, the Russian success sets the stage for further advances in other areas of the front, bringing final victory in the conflict closer……………….
…………….Ukraine launched its incursion into Kursk Region last August, initially gaining some ground and capturing numerous settlements before their advance was checked by Russian forces.
Putin has characterized the incursion as an attempt by Kiev to divert attention from Moscow’s offensive in Donbass, adding that this ploy has failed. Ukrainian officials described the operation as a way to gain leverage in potential peace talks with Russia. https://www.rt.com/russia/616355-kursk-region-fully-liberated/
UK to scrap plans for Ukraine troop deployment – The Times
RT.com 25 Apr 25
London and Paris had previously lead an effort to send a European contingent if a ceasefire is reached.
The UK has ditched plans to deploy a military contingent to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, The Times has reported, citing anonymous sources.
The defense chiefs from a number of European NATO states had in recent weeks been discussing sending military personnel to Ukraine, under a so-called “coalition of the willing.” Russia has strongly objected to the prospect of Western troops appearing in the neighboring country under any pretext.
In an article on Thursday, The Times quoted an unnamed source as saying that the “risks are too high and the forces inadequate for” a deployment that had been previously under consideration. According to the publication, “it was France who wanted a more muscular approach.”
Instead of coalition forces guarding key Ukrainian cities, ports, and nuclear power plants, the grouping now envisages more emphasis on Western military instructors training Ukrainian troops in the west of the country, who would “‘reassure’ by being there but aren’t a deterrence or protection force,” The Times reported, citing an anonymous source.
The softened vision for a Western military presence in Ukraine does, however, reportedly include the coalition’s aircraft patrolling Ukraine’s airspace and Türkiye providing maritime cover…………………………………..https://www.rt.com/news/616330-uk-scraps-ukraine-troop-deployment/
On Neo-Nazi Influence in Ukraine
The Azov Battalion, which arose during the coup, became a significant force in the war against the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass, who resisted the coup. Its commander, Andriy Biletsky, infamously said Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival … against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
the Azov backer’s television channel had by this time aired the hit TV show Servant of the People (2015-2019), which catapulted Volodymyr Zelensky to fame and ultimately into the presidency under the new Servant of the People Party. The former actor and comedian’s presidential campaign was bankrolled by Kolomoisky, according to multiple reports.
Zelensky was elected president on the promise of ending the Donbass war. About seven months into his term he traveled to the front line in Donbass to tell Ukrainian troops, where Azov is well-represented, to lay down their arms. Instead he was sent packing. The Kyiv Post
A short history of neo-Nazism in Ukraine in response to some who say, “There is no evidence that Nazism has substantial influence in Ukraine.” Joe Lauria reports.
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 20 Apr 25
The U.S. relationship with Ukrainian fascists began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.
Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.
The government study said, “Bandera’s wing (OUN/B) was a militant fascist organization.” Bandera’s closest deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, said: ““I…fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine…. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine….”
The study says: “At a July 6, 1941, meeting in Lwów, Bandera loyalists determined that Jews ‘have to be treated harshly…. We must finish them off…. Regarding the Jews, we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction.’”
Lebed himself proposed to “’cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,’ so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918.” Lebed was the “foreign minister” of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….”
The C.I.A. was not interested in working with Bandera, pages 81-82 of the report say, but the British MI6 was. “MI6 argued, Bandera’s group was ‘the strongest Ukrainian organization abroad, is deemed competent to train party cadres, [and] build a morally and politically healthy organization….’” An early 1954 MI6 summary noted that, “the operational aspect of this [British] collaboration [with Bandera] was developing satisfactorily. Gradually a more complete control was obtained over infiltration operations …
Britain ended its collaboration with Bandera in 1954. West German intelligence, under former Nazi intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen, then worked with Bandera, who was eventually assassinated with cyanide dust by the KGB in Munich in 1959.
Instead of Bandera, the C.I.A. was interested in Lebed, despite his fascist background. They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union. The U.S. government study says:
“CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. … Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe. Once in the United States, Lebed was the CIA’s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his ‘cunning character,’ his ‘relations with the Gestapo and … Gestapo training,’ [and] the fact that he was ‘a very ruthless operator.’”
The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine until Ukraine’s independence in 1991. “Mykola Lebed’s relationship with the CIA lasted the entire length of the Cold War,” the study says. “While most CIA operations involving wartime perpetrators backfired, Lebed’s operations augmented the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.”
Bandera Revival
The U.S. thus covertly kept Ukrainian fascist ideas alive inside Ukraine until at least Ukrainian independence was achieved. “Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998. He is buried in New Jersey, and his papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University,” the U.S. National Archives study says.
The successor organization to the OUN-B in the United States did not die with him, however. It had been renamed the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), according to the International Business Times (IBT).
“By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed [Yaroslav] Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983,” IBT reported. “Following the demise of [Viktor] Yanukovich’s regime [in 2014], the UCCA helped organise rallies in cities across the US in support of the EuroMaidan protests,” it reported.
That is a direct link between Maidan and WWII-era Ukrainian fascism.
Despite the U.S. favoring the less extreme Lebed over Bandera, the latter has remained the more inspiring figure in Ukraine.
In 1991, the first year of Ukraine’s independence, the neo-fascist Social National Party, later Svoboda Party, was formed, tracing its provenance directly to Bandera. It had a street named after Bandera in Liviv, and tried to name the city’s airport after him. (Svoboda won 10 percent of the Rada’s seats in 2012 before the coup and before Sen. John McCain and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appeared with Svoboda’s leader the following year.)
In 2010, pro-Western Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko declared Bandera a Hero of Ukraine, a status reversed by President Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown with the help of Ukrainian neo-Nazis in 2014.
More than 50 monuments, busts and museums commemorating Bandera have been erected in Ukraine, two-thirds of which have been built since 2005, the year the pro-American Yuschenko was elected. A Swiss academic study says:
“On January 13, 2011, the L’vivs’ka Oblast’ Council, meeting at an extraordinary session next to the Bandera monument in L’viv, reacted to the abrogation [skasuvannya] of Viktor Yushchenko’s order about naming Stepan Bandera a ‘Hero of Ukraine’ by affirming that ‘for millions of Ukrainians Bandera was and remains a Ukrainian Hero notwithstanding pitiable and worthless decisions of the courts’ and declaring its intention to rename ‘Stepan Bandera Street’ as ‘Hero of Ukraine Stepan Bandera Street.’”
Torchlit parades behind Bandera’s portrait are common in Ukrainian cities, particularly on Jan. 1, his birthday, including this year.
Mainstream on Neo-Nazis
From the start of the 2013-2014 events in Ukraine, Consortium News founder Robert Parry and other writers began providing the evidence NewsGuard, which bills itself as a news-rating agency, says doesn’t exist. Parry began reporting extensively on the coup and the influential role of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis. At the time, corporate media also reported on the essential part neo-Nazis played in the coup. [See: ROBERT PARRY: Ukraine’s Inconvenient Neo-Nazis]
As The New York Times reported, the neo-Nazi group, Right Sector, had the key role in the violent ouster of Yanukovych. The role of neo-fascist groups in the uprising and its influence on Ukrainian society was well reported by mainstream media outlets at the time.
The BBC, the NYT, the Daily Telegraph and CNN all reported on Right Sector, C14 and other extremists’ role in the overthrow of Yanukovych. The BBC ran this report a week after his ouster:
After the coup a number of ministers in the new government came from neo-fascist parties. NBC News (100 percent NewsGuard rating) reported in March 2014: “Svoboda, which means ‘Freedom,’ was given almost a quarter of the Cabinet positions in the interim government formed after the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February.”
Svoboda’s leader, Tyahnybok, whom McCain and Nuland stood on stage with, once called for the liberation of Ukraine from the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.” The International Business Times (82.5 percent) reported:
“In 2005 Tyahnybok signed an open letter to then Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko urging him to ban all Jewish organisations, including the Anti-Defamation League, which he claimed carried out ‘criminal activities [of] organised Jewry’, ultimately aimed at the genocide of the Ukrainian people.”
Before McCain and Nuland embraced Tyahnybok and his social national party, it was condemned by the European Parliament, which said in 2012:
Continue readingDrawing inspiration from Vaclav Havel..
https://www.artistespourlapaix.org/3-ans-de-souffrances-ukrainiennes/
Par Pierre Jasmin, Artiste pour la Paix, 21 février 2025
1 Vaclav Havel and the Art of Compromise
Unfortunately, I never knew Vaclav Havel personally, even though I gave masterclasses (except for one in Piešťany, Slovakia), concertos, and recitals in the Czech Republic for fourteen summers between 1991 and 2005. I therefore had the privilege of experiencing the miracle of the Velvet Revolution in a country as Eastern European as Ukraine. The ruling communist party, allied with the Soviet army that had bloodily halted Dubcek's revolution, sought out a humanist playwright from prison in 1989 and installed him in the presidential seat. The new Havel government accepted the separation of Czecho-Slovakia less than three years later, without a drop of bloodshed.
Five years after the first Minsk Treaty (UN), mistreated by our Minister Baird, an accomplice of the fascist Poroshenko, a similar hope arose in Ukraine with the election of the comedian Zelensky in May 2019. This unprecedented electoral moment unfolded in the first round with the defeat of the comfortable Russian gas option (to prevent the elderly from dying in their poorly insulated homes) represented by the succession of the corrupt President Yanukovych, deposed by the Maidan revolution in 2014, and then, in the second round, of the outgoing head of state, Poroshenko.
But unlike Havel, Zelensky, with 73.2% of the vote, surrounded himself with nationalist Bandera supporters who threatened his life to force him to bomb Donbass and join his country to the militaristic NATO, thus provoking the Russian invasion of his country. In a context of devastating war, he avoided running for re-election.
Our government, Radio-Canada, and professors like Dominique Arel, the only ones authorized to speak (Artists for Peace are censored), are imposing the obstinacy of unconditional Canadian support for this Zelensky, corrupted by Biden's weapons and money, against the imposition of a peace desired by the sacrificed young people in the trenches of Donbass, those who survived, and by the improbable Putin-Trump duo. Other arguments can be read in ().
This point 1 was an “opinion” sent to Le Devoir on Wednesday, which did not publish it. On February 20, Arel was among six university colleagues who cowardly avoided contradicting his pro-Zelensky propaganda, except for Frédérik Gagnon of UQAM: see point 7.
Lviv and its troubled history
Putin is blamed for having wanted to invade the whole of Ukraine as early as the end of February 2022 with his advance near Kyiv, which aimed to bomb the arms factories and munitions located in the capital and in Lviv. Why this former capital of Galicia, which also bore the Austrian name of Lwow, the German name of Lemberg, and the Polish name of Lvov? The answer lies in the murky history revealed in two books I read by Philippe Sands, “Return to Lemberg” and “The Line.” With a complacent ambiguity that delighted his far-right readers at Albin Michel, the Franco-British lawyer recounts the romanticized saga of Charlotte, the Nazi wife of Otto von Wächter. A member of the Nazi Party since 1923, the latter became, after the outbreak of the Second World War, governor of Krakow in Poland, then governor of the district of Galicia, two territories that were noted for the mass extermination of Jews whom he saw as allies of the Bolshevik Soviet Union. “Handsome Otto” praised Lemberg, a place far more welcoming to his family than Berlin and Krakow, as it fully shared Nazi ideology. He evaded justice until 1949, notably due to complicity in the Vatican.
Before his two questionable books, Sands had worked on the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, the Bosnian-Serb massacres, Guantanamo, and the invasion of Iraq by Blair and Bush, but not Jean Chrétien, following our mass demonstrations in Montreal motivated by the UN’s refusal to endorse the war, given the conclusions of the Swede Hans Blix exonerating Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction. We should also read Sands’s 2006 book, prophetic of the recent marginalization of the UN by Biden, Trump, Macron, etc., Lawless World, subtitled Torture Made in the USA (Music And Entertainment Books, 2009), in which he denounced the use of music at Abu Ghraib by CIA agents and the American army, sentenced last November to pay millions of dollars to compensate three victims (who were better defended than the thousands of others).
February 21: A Ukrainian historian exposes the “real” Zelensky
Hosted by Clark University (Atlanta), historian Marta Havryshko, a graduate and professor at the University of Lviv (!), received death threats for criticizing the Ukrainian far right, to which she retorted:
“Every day, we lose parts of our territory. Every day, we lose people. Every day, our children suffer from missile and drone attacks. And we don’t know the consequences.”
She commented for Aaron Maté on the destruction of her homeland by a proxy war waged between Russia and the United States, with Zelensky’s complicity:
“Those who want to continue this disaster, this hell,” she said, addressing the foreign warriors and those who criticized her for seeking peace, “ARE THEY READY TO SACRIFICE THEIR LIVES, and those of their brothers, sons, and other beloved family members, FOR THE ABSURD IDEA OF ACHIEVING VICTORY? “Russia is bigger, resourceful, with powerful friends. I cannot conceive that anyone who is not mentally disturbed can truly believe that Ukraine can change the situation on the front and reconquer the lost territories.”
Marta observed family members forced to fight and die in this proxy war. She showed Aaron Maté newsreels showing the army Ukrainian forces hunting and kidnapping men to force them to become conscripts to replace soldiers who are dying (or being sent to hospitals).
“Who will recapture these territories? Several of my friends, several of my relatives, are conscripted now. They suffer from suicidal thoughts, they suffer from despair or intense frustration. No one can replace them because of the problems with forced mobilization, and because we simply lack manpower.“
And she explains that everyone (except the neo-Nazis) blames Zelensky:
“His popularity has plummeted (even though television channels are censored). Ukraine under Zelensky is no longer a democracy.“
American Caitlin Johnstone adds that anyone who doesn’t support a ceasefire is a monster (of ignorance, I might add, to soften her attack).
4 abi Yar
Western censorship of Russian music, even that of a genius like Dmitri Shostakovich, is applied, for example, to the excellent Italian film The Rape. Fortunately, in 2019, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Nagano programmed his thirteenth symphony with the choir featuring the composer David Sela. Through a long poem by the Ukrainian Yevtuchenko (whose ex-wife, the poet Bella Achmadulina, I met in Moscow in 1978 and 1987), the Babi Yar symphony, his masterpiece, denounces the worst pogrom of all time, perpetrated by Ukrainian einsatzgruppen: 33,771 Jews murdered on the night of September 29-30, 1941. Why don’t pro-Netanyahu activists say a word about this humanist work? Because NATO supports Israel?
5 – Chrystia Freeland vs. Glenn Michalchuk
We won’t dwell on the nefarious role played since 2015 by the granddaughter of a Ukrainian Nazi, up until the horrific House of Commons ceremony that gave a standing ovation to Zelensky and the old Nazi soldier Hunka, much to the dismay of our dear friend Glenn Michalchuk, National President of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians and a peace activist in Winnipeg, who spoke with the Artists for Peace on November 24 at the Pan-Canadian Justice and Peace Network Counter-Summit ().
6 – Colleague David Mandel
and Sachs, Guterres, Swanson, Rabkin, Philpot, Saul, Seymour, Maté, Lorincz, Stone, etc.
A full professor of political science at UQAM, David, who is Jewish, had a devastating experience following Ukraine’s breach of the UN treaty signed in Minsk in 2014: he spent his summers with trade unionists in the Ukrainian Donbass who were being bombed by the Azov Battalion; here’s a photo that triggers warnings from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on my computer every time I share it, even though my intention is not to claim that the Nazification of Ukraine was a major phenomenon in the population.
(on the original of this photo, the man on the left is making a NAZI salute)
But here as elsewhere, for example in Germany on this election day where the AfD is increasing its support through a fierce campaign against immigrants and the illusion that more money for the army will solve the problems, the vociferous extreme right is taking an exaggerated position.
Supported by Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, also an advisor to Antonio Guterres, David Swanson of World Beyond War writes: “NATO is not what its defenders imagine it to be. NATO is neither legal nor legalistic. It is a violation of the UN Charter for a group of nations to swear to join each other’s wars, and it does not legalize, authorize, legitimize, or sanctify a war.” Amen to the British-American wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths. A warning to journalists who still lie about the obvious.
7 – UQAM and the Raoul Dandurand Chair – Forum on February 20 at 12:30
Seven guests, including six university professors, spoke, repeating media nonsense. Third, then first in line to ask questions, the organizers (who know me) interrupted the presentation four minutes before the scheduled start time of 2:00 p.m. PAIX’s opinion is not welcome among intellectuals, who find it too simplistic…and, above all, anti-government.
The APLP really don’t like dictators Putin and Trump, but if they stop the war, on this point alone, we will congratulate them. The same goes for Elon Musk, if he succeeds in cutting the American military budget in half as he says he intends to do. Are the left-wing ideologues disowning us? We reassure them that as soon as these two objectives are achieved (?), we will collaborate in the fight for equality, fraternity and liberty…
8. Good news in Berlin with the award of a special prize on February 18th to the following film, which we loved for its objectivity on Hamas and the fate of civilians in the Gaza Strip following the Israeli bombings that decimated the family of this great humanist
US proposes leaving former Ukrainian territories under Russian control – Bloomberg
18 Apr,25 – https://www.rt.com/news/615961-russia-ukraine-peace-us/
Washington’s offer also reportedly envisions easing sanctions on Moscow and ending Kiev’s NATO aspirations.
The US has presented its allies with details of its peace plan to bring the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to an end, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing European officials familiar with the matter.
The proposal, outlined during a meeting in Paris on Thursday, reportedly includes easing sanctions on Russia, as well as terminating Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO. The roadmap would effectively freeze the conflict and leave former Ukrainian territories that are part of Russia under Moscow’s control, the sources suggested.
One of the officials told Bloomberg that the proposal still had to be discussed with Kiev, adding that the plan would not actually amount to a definitive conflict settlement. Kiev’s European backers would not recognize the territories as Russian, the source suggested.
The US delegation at the Paris meetings, which involved senior officials from several countries, was led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff. They met with French President Emmanuel Macron and also held discussions with top officials from France, Germany, the UK, and Ukraine.
Earlier on Friday, Rubio signaled Washington was ready to “move on” if a way to end the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev could not be found “within days.”
“We need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on,” Rubio told reporters before departing from France.
Moscow has signaled a full ceasefire with Ukraine was highly unlikely, citing Kiev’s violations of previous deals. Speaking to reporters at the UN headquarters on Thursday, Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia said there are “big issues with the comprehensive ceasefire,” recalling the fate of the now-defunct Minsk agreements, which were “misused and abused to prepare Ukraine for the confrontation.”
The diplomat also cited repeated Ukrainian violations of a US-brokered 30-day moratorium on energy infrastructure strikes, implemented on March 18.
“How close we are to the ceasefire is a big question to me personally, because, as I said, we had an attempt at a limited ceasefire on energy infrastructure, which was not observed by the Ukrainian side. So, in these circumstances, to speak about a ceasefire is simply unrealistic at this stage,” Nebenzia said.
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