Ukrainian Tipping Points: UPDATE 2
Russian and Eurasian Politics, by Gordonhahn, September 11, 2024
Outgoing US President Joe Biden has said his administration is working on approval of Ukrainian use of U.S. long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia (https://www.ft.com/content/48289996-e1bf-4c3e-befb-031698e89e1b). The UK is pressuring the US to approve such use, and US Secretary of State and UK’s foreign minister have just arrived in Kiev (https://ctrana.news/news/471869-blinken-i-hlava-mid-britanii-pribyli-v-kiev.html).
UPDATE 1:
Reuters reports US is just about se to send long-range missiles to Ukraine for attacks deep inside Russia:
US close to agreeing on long-range missiles for Ukraine; delivery to take months.
Summary
-Stealthy JASSM weapons have range to hit targets inside Russia
-Decision expected in autumn, U.S. officials say
-Pentagon trying to integrate JASSMs on Soviet-era Ukrainian jets
WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – The U.S. is close to an agreement to give Ukraine long-range cruise missiles that could reach deep into Russia, but Kyiv would need to wait several months as the U.S. works through technical issues ahead of any shipment, U.S. officials said.The inclusion of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) in a weapons package is expected to be announced this autumn, three sources said, though a final decision has not been made (https://www.reuters.com/world/us-close-agreeing-long-range-missiles-ukraine-delivery-take-months-2024-09-03/).
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
The NATO-Russia Ukrainian war is at a tipping point; one that leads to a Russian march to the Dniepr River and the relocation of what remains of pro-NATO Ukraine’s populace to right bank Ukraine and its Maidan government away from the western banks of the Diner and deeper into western Ukraine, likely Lvov. Not surprisingly, Kiev therefore is desperate and trying to escalate in ways that implicate or bring deeper, more direct NATO involvement, which has been deep and escalating on NATO’s part for years. For Kiev, ideal would be a full-scale NATO military intervention. The West’s previous strategy of gradual escalation – ‘boiling the frog’ by providing redlined air defense systems, then short-range missile/artillery systems, then tanks, then F-16s – hasd run its course.
The only options now are permitting Kiev to use Western missiles to hit deep inside Russia and target Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top leaders. Until now neither Kiev nor the West has crossed any Russian or ‘Putin red lines’ because there have not been any Russian-declared ‘red lines’ but Western MSM-set red lines. One would-be hard-pressed to cite even one clearly expressed Putin ‘red line.’
I fear the Western escalation will continue up to crossing an actual ‘red line’ that Russians have indirectly hinted at – Ukraine’s use of long-range Western missiles such as American ATACMs and British Storm Shadows to strike deep into Russia – will be crossed one way or another, likely after the U.S. presidential election on November 5th.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://gordonhahn.com/2024/09/11/ukrainian-tipping-points-update-2/—
Victoria Nuland, former US deputy secretary of state, confirms West told Zelensky to abandon peace deal

Comment: Nuland confirms what was already known. The reason the conflict is ongoing is because the US wanted it to be so.
https://www.rt.com/news/603708-ukraine-istanbul-us-nuland/ 9 Sept 24
Ukraine-Russia talks fell apart after Kiev asked foreign backers for advice, the former US deputy secretary of state has said.
The US, UK and other backers of Ukraine told Kiev to reject the deal reached at the 2022 Istanbul peace talks with Russia, former US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland has said.
In an interview with Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, former editor-in-chief of the liberal news channel Dozhd, which aired on Thursday, Nuland was asked to comment on reports that the peace process between Moscow and Kiev in late March and early April 2022 collapsed after then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Ukraine and told Vladimir Zelensky to keep fighting.
“Relatively late in the game the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going and it became clear to us, clear to the Brits, clear to others that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s main condition was buried in an annex to this document that they were working on,” she said of the deal being discussed by the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Türkiye’s largest city.
The proposed agreement included limits on the kinds of weapons that Kiev could possess, as a result of which Ukraine “would basically be neutered as a military force,” while there were no similar constraints on Russia, the former diplomat explained.
“People inside Ukraine and people outside Ukraine started asking questions about whether this was a good deal and it was at that point that it fell apart,” Nuland said.
The veteran diplomatic hawk, who during her time in the State Department was renowned for her hostility towards Russia, quit the post of under secretary of state for political affairs in March this year. Nuland played a key role in the violent Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, which toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.
During the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, she called for deeper US involvement in the conflict and advocated for Ukraine to be armed with increasingly sophisticated weapons. However, in February, the 63-year-old essentially acknowledged the failure of her longstanding policy of containing Moscow, telling the CNN that modern Russia had turned out to be “not the Russia we wanted”
During her conversation with Zygar, Nuland confirmed that both Moscow and Kiev were eager to seek a diplomatic solution a month after the outbreak of the fighting.
“Russia had an interest at that time in at least seeing what it could get. Ukraine, obviously, had an interest if they could stop the war and get and get Russia out,” she said.
US officials “were not in the room” during the talks in Istanbul, only offering Kiev “support” in case it were needed, she claimed.
Putin said last week that the only reason the Istanbul deal failed was because of “the wish of the elites in the US and some European nations to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” adding that Boris Johnson served as the messenger to quash the peace process.
The negotiations in Türkiye yielded a draft agreement, which would have ended the hostilities, Putin recalled. Kiev was willing to declare military neutrality, limit its armed forces, and vow not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. In return, Moscow would have joined other leading powers in offering Ukraine security guarantees, he stressed.
According to the Russian leader, talks with Kiev are still possible, but can only happen “not on the basis of some ephemeral demands but on the basis of the documents that were agreed and actually initialized in Istanbul.”
IAEA’s Grossi says Zaporizhzhia cooling tower likely to be demolished
WNN 05 September 2024
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi has inspected the cooling tower affected by fire last month at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and says it is “not usable in the future, so it will probably be demolished”.
Grossi, on his fifth visit to the six-unit nuclear plant which has been under Russian military control since early March 2022, said that the security situation remains “very fragile … so our work continues … we will be analysing, assessing what we saw today – until the conflict is over or it enters a phase where there is no more active military activity … the possibility of something serious cannot be excluded”.
The IAEA has had a team of experts stationed at Zaporizhzhia for two years – with 23 rotations of staff during that time. Their presence is intended to boost nuclear safety and security at the plant which is on the front line of Russian and Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine and Russia each blame the other side for putting nuclear safety and security at risk. After the fire at the cooling tower Russia accused Ukraine of causing it with drone attacks, while Ukraine accused Russia of causing it deliberately, or by negligence………………………………….. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/IAEA-s-Grossi-says-Zaporizhzhia-cooling-tower-set
USING UKRAINE SINCE 1948

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News., June 11, 2024, https://popularresistance.org/using-ukraine-since-1948/

The U.S. Has Staged Operations With Extremists From Ukraine To Undermine Russia For Nearly 8 Decades.
It’s led us to the doorstep of nuclear annihilation.
The United States has for nearly 80 years seen Ukraine as the staging ground for its once covert and increasingly overt war with Russia.
After years of warnings, and after talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia fought back two years ago. With neither side backing down, Ukraine is increasingly becoming a flashpoint that could lead to nuclear war.
The West thinks Russia is bluffing.
But its doctrine states that if Russia feels its existence is threatened it could resort to nuclear arms. Instead of taking these warnings seriously, NATO is recklessly opening corridors for a ground war against Russia in Ukraine; France says it’s putting together a coalition of nations to enter the war, despite Russia saying French or any other NATO force would be fair game.
In Paris the other day Joe Biden said Russia wants to conquer all of Europe but can’t even take Khariv. It is this kind of inflammatory nonsense, combined with allowing Ukraine to fire NATO weapons into Russian territory, that is imperiling us all.
The danger started building up many years ago but it is now reaching a climax.
The U.S. relationship with Ukraine, and its extremists, to undermine Russia 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.
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….”
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.”
Continued Until And Beyond Ukrainian Independence
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. &Nbsp;It Had Been Renamed The Ukrainian Congress Committee Of America (UCCA), According To 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 the U.S.-backed 2014 Maidan coup against a democratically-elected Ukrainian government and WWII-era Ukrainian fascism.
Since 2014, the U.S. pushed for an attack on the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine who had rejected the coup, and NATO began training and equipping Ukrainian troops. Combined with talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia reacted after years of warning.
More than two years after Russia’s intervention, with Ukraine clearly losing the war, Western leaders will do just about anything to save their political skins, as they’ve staked too much on winning in Ukraine. Don’t listen to them. They need a West in denial of the dangers facing us.
As President John F. Kennedy said in his 1963 American University speech:
“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
The world may wake up when it’s too late — after nuclear missiles have already started flying.
Rare photos show Earth’s fatal hotspot that can kill any human standing nearby in just five minutes

Harrowing photos of the lethal area reveal how dangerous it is to be near the hotspot
Joshua Nair, https://www.ladbible.com/news/world-news/chernobyl-elephants-foot-radiation-photos-743946-20240906 6 Sept 24
There’s a spot on Earth that is so dangerous, it could kill someone if they stood nearby for just five minutes.
And the story behind it is haunting.
A lot of things on our blue planet can be dangerous towards us humans, but something we can’t really avoid is radiation.
No, I’m not talking about generating electricity for all of our technology, I mean the radiation that can be caused by the use of weapons, which can leave everlasting effects on certain areas of the world.
Nuclear weapons are bad, but the biggest tragedy related to this isn’t to do with weapons at all, and it occurred in Chernobyl after a tragic power plant explosion in Pripyat, Ukraine.
What was the Chernobyl disaster?
At a nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl on 26 April, 1986, reactor number four exploded during a failed steam test, killing 30 people instantly.
Radiation released could be detected in countries as far as Sweden, while several civilians and workers in the area would go on to die from severe radiation poisoning, while others died from other health issues and terminal illnesses from the unsafe levels of radiation put into the atmosphere.
It is still by far and away the worst nuclear disaster in human history, reportedly costing governments around $700 million (£532 million) to deal with, while the area is uninhabitable.
The ‘Elephant’s Foot’
Known as the most dangerous object on the planet, it was caused by the Chernobyl disaster as a large hunk formed at the bottom of the reactor, which was caused by uranium fuel becoming molten when it overheated.
Steam blew the reactor apart, as heat, steam and molten nuclear fuel combined to make a 100-ton flow of dangerous chemicals that poured out of the reactor and through to the basement of the plant, solidifying and being given the name the ‘Elephant’s Foot’, resembling one.
Why is it so dangerous?
People soon realised after the explosion that it shouldn’t be approached for a while, as the radioactive lump continued to sear for months.
When measured, the Elephant’s Foot released almost 10,000 roentgens per hour, equivalent to the exposure given by four and a half million chest X-rays.
It’s is incredibly dangerous, with photos of people near the hotspot showcasing some of the bravest scientists out there, putting their lives at risk to better understand the Elephant’s Foot.
According to science magazine Nautilus, 30 seconds of exposure would have your cells haemorrhaging, and in just four minutes, violent vomiting and diarrhoea would hit, and if you got to five minutes in the lump’s vicinity, you’d die within two days.
Studies on the Elephant’s Foot
People have chosen to visit and study the site for short periods of time, and while it is still cooling down, the Elephant’s Foot is incredibly dangerous to be around, as scientists have only taken the smallest of samples to carry studies out on.
The Elephant’s Foot remains entombed in the New Safe Confinement (NSC) that was slid over Chernobyl to prevent any more radiation leaks from the nuclear power plant.
Ukrainian Tipping Points: UPDATE

by Gordonhahn September 3, 2024 https://gordonhahn.com/2024/09/03/ukrainian-tipping-points-update/
Rueters reports US is just about se to send long-range missiles to Ukraine for attacks deep inside Russia:
US close to agreeing on long-range missiles for Ukraine; delivery to take months
Summary
-Stealthy JASSM weapons have range to hit targets inside Russia
-Decision expected in autumn, U.S. officials say
-Pentagon trying to integrate JASSMs on Soviet-era Ukrainian jets
WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – The U.S. is close to an agreement to give Ukraine long-range cruise missiles that could reach deep into Russia, but Kyiv would need to wait several months as the U.S. works through technical issues ahead of any shipment, U.S. officials said. The inclusion of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) in a weapons package is expected to be announced this autumn, three sources said, though a final decision has not been made (https://www.reuters.com/world/us-close-agreeing-long-range-missiles-ukraine-delivery-take-months-2024-09-03/).
IAEA chief on reviving Iran nuclear deal, preventing Russia-Ukraine nuclear disaster

ALARABIYA NEWS, 1 Sept 24,
In a special interview on Al Arabiya, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi discussed several pressing global nuclear issues. He highlighted the ongoing concerns related to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, particularly the risks posed to nuclear power plants situated near active combat zones. Grossi emphasized the IAEA’s commitment to ensuring the safety of these facilities, despite the challenges and uncertainties. He stressed the importance of the agency’s impartiality, noting that their assessments are based solely on independently verified information to avoid politicization.
The IAEA chief also addressed the Iranian nuclear program, expressing concerns over the country’s continued accumulation of highly enriched uranium. He revealed that he had received a response from Iran’s new president, signaling a potential for renewed dialogue aimed at ensuring the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear activities. Grossi underscored the need for increased transparency and cooperation from Iran, especially in light of advancements in their nuclear capabilities……………………………………………… https://english.alarabiya.net/webtv/programs/special-interview/2024/09/01/iaea-chief-on-reviving-iran-nuclear-deal-preventing-russia-ukraine-nuclear-disaster—
Ukrainian Tipping Points

Paid liars from Washington, Stanford, London and elsewhere have tried and likely will continue to try to tell you ‘Ukraine is winning’. It is not and cannot do so without a full-scale NATO intervention and a likely resulting World War III.
Russian and Eurasian Politics, Gordonhahn, September 1, 2024
The NATO-Russia Ukrainian war is at a tipping point; one that leads to a Russian march to the Dniepr River and the relocation of what remains of pro-NATO Ukraine’s populace to right bank Ukraine and its Maidan government away from the western banks of the Diner and deeper into western Ukraine, likely Lvov.
Not surprisingly, Kiev therefore is desperate and trying to escalate in ways that implicate or bring deeper, more direct NATO involvement, which has been deep and escalating on NATO’s part for years. For Kiev, ideal would be a full-scale NATO military intervention. The West’s previous strategy of gradual escalation – ‘boiling the frog’ by providing redlined air defense systems, then short-range missile/artillery systems, then tanks, then F-16s – has run its course.
The only options now are permitting Kiev to use Western missiles to hit deep inside Russia and target Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top leaders. Until now neither Kiev nor the West has crossed any Russian or ‘Putin red lines’ because there have not been any Russian-declared ‘red lines’ but Western MSM-set red lines. One would-be hard-pressed to cite even one clearly expressed Putin ‘red line.’
I fear the Western escalation will continue up to crossing an actual ‘red line’ that Russians have indirectly hinted at – Ukraine’s use of long-range Western missiles such as American ATACMs and British Storm Shadows to strike deep into Russia – will be crossed one way or another, likely after the U.S. presidential election on November 5th.
The crossing of all previous red lines drawn largely by Western media produce a demonstration effect of supposed Russian weakness, which many play up in order to also facilitate a NATO decision to cross the long-range missile red line or to intervene overtly and officially on the ground in the war. The latter has been Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s goal since the war began and even before during the Minsk ‘ceasefire’. The repeated targeting of civilian areas in Donbass and now in Russia proper, bombing harvesting combines in Belgorod, and the now failed Kursk invasion itself is of the same genre. This desire, indeed desparate need to draw NATO ‘all in’ stands behind Zelenskiy’s fakes –Bucha, Russia attacked Zaporozhe Nuclear Power Plant Rus controls, a children’s hospital, schools, the Kramatorsk train station, etc., etc. This fakery is all part and parcel of the simulated reality that has been the Maidan and its resulting regime, built on legends of police brutality and mass shooting perpetrated by the Maidanists themselves.
Western propagandists use the alleged ‘failure of Putin to respond’ to Western-created ‘Putin red lines’ and to West-Ukraine provocations in order to give the impression that Russia is a paper bear and beatable, that Ukraine is winning and can win, and that the West and Ukraine should continue escalating and intensify its support and perhaps have NATO intervene full-scale. Zelensky himself – the premier propagandist and stage director in today’s West — has pointed to the mini invasion into Kursk as proof that Moscow’s ‘red lines’ are “illusory” and appealed to the leaders of Britain, France, Germay, and the US to allow the use of long-range missiles to strike air bases on Russian territory (www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/kursk-incursion-proves-putins-red-lines-are-a-bluff-says-zelensky-bdc893ztw).
At the same time, the West has played up ‘Putin’s nuclear threats’ – of whch there have been none. Russia has a clearly stated and codified nuclear use doctrine: nuclear weapons will be used only in the event od an existential threat to the survival of the Russian state……………………………..
So far, Washington has conducted a controlled but likely open-ended escalation until dominance is achieved; hence the relative U.S. restraint and its constraning of the UK, Poland, and others hitherto. But this restraint and constraint should not be overdrawn. The U.S. will escalate as far as is imaginable if it is safe to do so in order to deal a ‘strategic defeat’ to ‘Putin’s Russia.’ …………………………………………
Thus, the defeat of Kiev on the left bank augurs for a long standoff with Western support for continung attacks of various kinds across the Dniepr against Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine that will likely lead to a second phase of the war in right bank Ukraine. The only way to avoid this outcome is by way of a negotiated treaty involving at least Kiev and Moscow; the West is an unlikely partner in a peace endeavor, given the chaos now reigning in Washington. ……………………………..
The threat of such developments is peaking now. Zelenskiy and the Ukrainians are desparate given the not-so-long-coming collapse of Ukraine’s defense across the entire front; hence the desparate throw of the dice that is the Kursk invasion—a last desparate attempt to turn the tables on Moscow……………………
…………………………………………………Paid liars from Washington, Stanford, London and elsewhere have tried and likely will continue to try to tell you ‘Ukraine is winning’. It is not and cannot do so without a full-scale NATO intervention and a likely resulting World War III.
Western ‘experts’ and intel propagandists have failed Ukraine and their own peoples by their ignorance of Russia and their professional malfeasance. They have misunderstood and underestimated Russia for 35 years ………………..
……………. They underestimated how Russia would respond to NATO expansion and the broken promise it entailed, a Western-backed. ………………………….
………………………The grave failure of Western rusology, academia, and government, I suspect, is bringing the world back to schism and nuclear confrontation.
………………………………….. The U.S. Democrat Party-state and the media-academic-military-industrial-congressional complex cannot allow prior to the presidential election neither an obvious Ukrainian collapse to materialize as an ‘October surprise’ nor a a major escalation that brings or clearly risks U.S. troops or the homeland.
But there should be no doubt; there are domestic options of an escalatory nature being examined in Western decisionmaking and research centers. When one of the next Western or Western-backed Ukrainian escalations is enacted – regardless if it is engineered under a Trump or Harris administration or the guise thereof – there will follow, as sure as night follows day, a Russian response targetting not just ruined, disappearing Ukraine but the West. https://gordonhahn.com/2024/09/01/ukrainian-tipping-points/
Ukrainian defense chief visits Pentagon
“Ukraine has been given carte blanche for operations in Russian regions. “
https://www.rt.com/news/603337-ukraine-defense-minister-meets-austin/ 1 Sept 24
Politico reported earlier that Rustem Umerov would try to persuade the US to lift its restrictions on long-range strikes against Russia
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has met with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to discuss additional military aid. The visit came amid renewed requests by Kiev for Washington to lift its restrictions on the use of US-supplied weapons for long-range strikes deep inside Russia.
Earlier this week, Politico claimed, citing anonymous sources, that Umerov and Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff Andrey Yermak would attempt to persuade their American backers to change their minds.
On Friday, the Pentagon’s Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh announced that “Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III held bilateral talks with Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov today regarding Ukraine’s ongoing operations [and] security assistance priorities.”
The latter include air defense systems, artillery and armored vehicles needed to help Ukraine “build additional combat power.”
Another topic high on the officials’ agenda was the upcoming meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on September 6. The gathering will see more than 50 of the countries which support Kiev congregate in Ramstein, Germany to deliberate over plans for more military supplies for Ukraine, in order to cover both its immediate and long-term needs.
Austin pledged to “continue to build on the strategic partnership between” the US and Ukraine, Singh concluded.
On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Major-General Patrick Ryder clarified that Washington’s “policy has not changed,” meaning that Ukraine is allowed to use US-supplied weapons to defend against cross-border attacks, but not for “deep strikes” into what the US recognizes as Russian territory.
Meanwhile, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday that Washington “will keep the conversations with the Ukrainians going [on the issue], but we are going to keep them private.”
That same day, Zelensky insisted that “there should be no restrictions on the range of weapons for Ukraine.”
Commenting on Kirby’s statement on Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that it indicated that “Ukraine has been given carte blanche for operations in Russian regions.”
“The administration of [US President] Joe Biden is obviously getting ready to make new concessions to Zelensky and give him a free hand to use virtually any type of American weapons, including [for attacks] deep into Russian territory,” the diplomat alleged, as quoted by RIA Novosti.
Her remarks echoed those made on Tuesday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who insisted that the “West does not want to avoid escalation.”
The minister warned that Kiev’s backers would be “playing with fire” if they were to allow Ukraine to use their weapons to conduct long-range strikes deep inside Russia.
Pentagon rejects Zelensky’s latest weapons plea

“There should be no restrictions on the range of weapons for Ukraine,” Zelensky said on Monday. “Defenders of life should face no restrictions on weapons.”
https://www.rt.com/news/603168-ukraine-weapons-restriction-change/ 27 Aug 24
Zelensky claimed these restrictions hampered his military in countering the Russian operation north of Kharkov in May and demanded that they be lifted entirely. Washington responded by allowing “counter fires” against Russian forces across the border. In practice, Ukrainian forces have used their US-provided HIMARS rocket launchers to strike towns, bridges and roads instead.
The Ukrainian leader has once again demanded unrestricted use of US-supplied missiles.
Washington’s policy on Kiev’s use of American weapons against Russia remains unchanged, the US Department of Defense has said. The statement came after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky renewed his demands that all restrictions on Western hardware be lifted.
The limitations were put in place to allow the US and its allies to claim they were not directly involved in the conflict with Russia, yet still send Kiev billions of dollars worth of arms, ammunition, equipment, and cash.
“Our policy has not changed,” Pentagon spokesman Major-General Patrick Ryder said on Tuesday, explaining that Ukraine is allowed to use US-supplied weapons to defend from cross-border attacks but not for “deep strikes” into Russian territory.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also told reporters on Monday that there were “no changes” to the policy with regard to the restrictions.
The US has already relaxed its policy from the initial set of restrictions, which only allowed Kiev to strike Russian territory Ukraine claimed as its own – from Crimea to Zaporozhye, Kherson, and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
Zelensky claimed these restrictions hampered his military in countering the Russian operation north of Kharkov in May and demanded that they be lifted entirely. Washington responded by allowing “counter fires” against Russian forces across the border. In practice, Ukrainian forces have used their US-provided HIMARS rocket launchers to strike towns, bridges and roads instead.
“There should be no restrictions on the range of weapons for Ukraine,” Zelensky said on Monday. “Defenders of life should face no restrictions on weapons.”
His chief of staff Andrey Yermak and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov are scheduled to visit Washington later this week and present a list of targets Kiev wishes to strike, Politico reported on Monday, citing anonymous sources. Yermak was behind the initial push to relax the restrictions in May.
China, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia are “worried that the West will continue to relax the conditions for using supplied weapons to attack Russia’s homeland,” Beijing’s special representative for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, said on Tuesday.
The current US government drew the line on deep strikes into Russia after one of its ATACMS rockets armed with a cluster warhead struck a Crimean beach in early June. Moscow blamed Washington for the carnage and suggested it might arm “states and entities” around the world hostile to the US in response.
Tangible Panic Grows in Ukraine Amid Donbass-front Collapse
Each paragraph below is illustrated on the original, with explanatory sources – quotes, videos, maps )
Simplicius, Aug 29, 2024 https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-82824-tangible-panic-grows?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=148194067&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email—
Ukraine is slowly descending into a panic regarding the collapse of the Donbass front, and in fact that collapse is seemingly accelerating. Some semblance of a normalcy bias continues to grip the more obdurate observers, but the keen-eyed are seeing the writing on the wall.
Head of the top Ukrainian channel “Deepstate UA”—which is basically the Ukrainian ‘Rybar’—calls the situation complete chaos:
Arestovich wrote a long post on his official account where he called the situation around Pokrovsk an “operational crisis”.
Rada deputy Goncharenko was beside himself, calling the situation catastrophic. He added that after Pokrovsk, the road to the entire Dnieper will be wide open:
It’s almost pointless even updating the exact captures and advances anymore because right now they’re simply happening so fast that within hours of the Sitrep’s release, the information is already obsolete, and Russians have advanced even more. But suffice it to say, this time there were even several major captures in areas other than Pokrovsk.
Russian forces captured the remainder of Konstantinovka on the Ugledar line:
Ugledar is now becoming in danger of being surrounded for the AFU in the near future.
Then Russians captured most of Grodovka, after having just entered it days ago:
At this pace, it will be captured in the next day or two it seems.
After capturing New York, they’ve already entered the next settlement north of it, Nelipovka. And nearby, they’ve advanced deeper into Toretsk, gaining hundreds of meters inside the important city.
As of now, they’re mere kilometers from Pokrovsk, and right at the outskirts of its neighboring city of Mirnograd:
Nearby, they’ve now entered Selidov for the first time, and are already working through it:
Another Ukrainian account:
“Battles for Selidove have begun! The enemy is actively pushing our defenses on the eastern outskirts of the city, the fighting continues in the area of the stadium and the park, slowly moving towards the high-rises, also the podars are trying to level the front and are starting to press from Mykhailivka to the south and push from the highway in the east. The same squeeze situation occurred in New York.”
In light of the ongoing collapse, the potential for dangerous escalation rises because Zelensky gets increasingly desperate to engineer some kind of black swan event that could overturn the table and upend events.
With this in mind there continues to be a slew of rumors for what Zelensky’s next move might be. For instance, there continue to be reports of AFU preparations on the Zaporozhye front:
There is some credence to the above given that in the past few days the Russian airforce has carried out at least 2 separate air strikes along the Black Sea toward Odessa—one was at Snake Island, and another at oil platforms just east of there which Ukrainian GUR was using to stage landings toward Crimea.
This is roughly how Zelensky’s potential plan is meant to play out:
A simultaneous mass landing by special forces around the Kinburn Spit area to harass the ‘rears’ of Russia’s Dnieper grouping, while other amphibious forces directly strike at the Energodar plant and then the main logistics force tries to wrap around from Zaporozhye city along the river to connect with them.
No one quite knows why this happened, but there are a few potential conjectures:
- Lukashenko foresees Ukraine attempting to create some provocation as part of the earlier mentioned ‘black swan’ to involve NATO forces, and is taking appropriate deterrence measures
- Lukashenko is trying to help Russian troops by pinning or ‘fixing’ Ukrainian border guards along the Belarus border, given that Ukraine was said to have removed many of the border forces to use them in Kursk
- Least likely: Russia and Belarus plan some kind of joint final decapitation invasion to finish off the war
Most likely it’s a combination of 1 and 2.
Partly related to the heightening tensions, we now have a new very interesting statement by Lavrov which appears to vindicate my recent reporting about potential changes to the Russian nuclear doctrine, given the West’s unceasing escalations against Russia’s red lines.
There’s an undercurrent of tension now running through events as other somewhat peculiar happenings have gone on. For instance, Belarus suddenly moved a lot of forces to the Ukrainian border again, and for the first time they appear to have a tactical symbol of a ‘B’ on them, as if they are preparing for direct combat:

Zelensky signs law to ban Ukraine’s largest church
https://www.rt.com/russia/603017-zelensky-signs-orthodox-church-law/ 28 Aug 24
The bill outlaws any religious organizations considered to have ties to Moscow
Vladimir Zelensky has signed a law that calls for the banning of any religious group suspected of having ties to Russia. It threatens to effectively shut down the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – the largest faith-based organization in the country.
The Ukrainian parliament introduced the legislation earlier this week; it is expected to take effect in 30 days. After that, all the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and all affiliated religious organizations will be outlawed.
The UOC will have nine months to sever all ties with the ROC, despite the Ukrainian church having already declared full autonomy from the Moscow Patriarchate in 2022, following the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict.
After signing the legislation on Saturday, the country’s Independence Day, Zelensky released a video address stating that “Ukrainian Orthodoxy is today taking a step towards liberation from Moscow’s devils.”
Moscow has condemned Ukraine’s crackdown on religious communities; the Holy Synod of the ROC issued a statement on Thursday comparing the new legislation with Soviet-style repression and other historical persecutions of Christians.
“The purpose of this law is to liquidate [the UOC] and all its communities and to forcibly transfer them to other religious organizations,” the Synod surmised, noting that “hundreds of monasteries, thousands of communities, and millions of Orthodox believers in Ukraine will find themselves outlawed and will lose their property and place of prayer.”
The Synod stated that it would appeal Kiev’s actions with international human rights organizations and call on them to immediately and objectively respond to the “flagrant persecution of believers in Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev responded to the new law by stating that Zelensky has “no religious identity” and describing the crackdown as “full-fledged Satanism,” supported by Ukraine’s Western backers.
“This story will not go unpunished for Ukraine,” Medvedev wrote, stating “the country will be destroyed, like Sodom and Gomorrah,” referring to the Old Testament story of two cities obliterated by divine intervention for their wickedness. “The demons will inevitably fall,” he continued, adding that their punishment will be “earthly, cruel, painful and will happen soon.”
Religious tensions have plagued the country for a long time, with a number of entities claiming to be the true Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The two main rival factions are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Kiev-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which is considered by the Russian Orthodox Church to be schismatic.
The UOC remains the largest Orthodox church in Ukraine, with more than 8,000 parishes across the country. However, since the 2010s, some of these have been choosing to transfer to the jurisdiction of the OCU under pressure from authorities in Kiev.
The western way of war – Owning the narrative trumps reality

Take, for example, the NATO-orchestrated and equipped incursion into the symbolically significant Kursk Oblast. In terms of a ‘winning narrative’, its appeal to the West is obvious: Ukraine ‘takes the war to into Russia’.
Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, Mon, 26 Aug 2024
War propaganda and feint are as old as the hills. Nothing new. But what is new is that infowar is no longer the adjunct to wider war objectives – but has become an end in and of itself.
The West has come to view ‘owning’ the winning narrative – and presenting the Other’s as clunky, dissonant, and extremist – as being more important than facing facts-on-the ground. Owning the winning narrative is to win, in this view. Virtual ‘victory’ thus trumps ‘real’ reality.
Had the Ukrainian forces succeeded in capturing the Kursk Nuclear Power Station, they then would have had a significant bargaining chip, and might well have syphoned away Russian forces from the steadily collapsing Ukrainian ‘Line’ in Donbas.
And to top it off, (in infowar terms), the western media was prepped and aligned to show President Putin as “frozen” by the surprise incursion, and “wobbling” with anxiety that the Russian public would turn against him in their anger at the humiliation.
Bill Burns, head of CIA, opined that “Russia would offer no concessions on Ukraine, until Putin’s over-confidence was challenged, and Ukraine could show strength“. Other U.S. officials added that the Kursk incursion – in itself – would not bring Russia to the negotiating table; It would be necessary to build on the Kursk operation with other daring operations (to shake Moscow’s sang froid).
Of course, the overall aim was to show Russia as fragile and vulnerable, in line with the narrative that, at any moment Russia, could crack apart and scatter to the wind, in fragments. Leaving the West as winner, of course.
In fact, the Kursk incursion was a huge NATO gamble: It involved mortgaging Ukraine’s military reserves and armour, as chips on the roulette table, as a bet that an ephemeral success in Kursk would upend the strategic balance. The bet was lost, and the chips forfeit.
So, war becomes rather the setting for imposing ideological alignment across a wide global alliance and enforcing it via compliant media.
This objective enjoys a higher priority than, say, ensuring a manufacturing capacity sufficient to sustain military objectives. Crafting an imagined ‘reality’ has taken precedence over shaping the ground reality.
The point here is that this approach – being a function of whole of society alignment (both at home and abroad) – creates entrapments into false realities, false expectations, from which an exit (when such becomes necessary), turns near impossible, precisely because imposed alignment has ossified public sentiment. The possibility for a State to change course as events unfold becomes curtailed or lost, and the accurate reading of facts on the ground veers toward the politically correct and away from reality.
The cumulative effect of ‘a winning virtual narrative’ holds the risk nonetheless, of sliding incrementally toward inadvertent ‘real war’.
Take, for example, the NATO-orchestrated and equipped incursion into the symbolically significant Kursk Oblast. In terms of a ‘winning narrative’, its appeal to the West is obvious: Ukraine ‘takes the war to into Russia’.
Plainly put, this Kursk affair exemplifies the West’s problem with ‘winning narratives’: Their inherent flaw is that they are grounded in emotivism and eschew argumentation. Inevitably, they are simplistic. They are simply intended to fuel a ‘whole of society’ common alignment. Which is to say that across MSM; business, federal agencies, NGOs and the security sector, all should adhere to opposing all ‘extremisms’ threatening ‘our democracy’.
This aim, of itself, dictates that the narrative be undemanding and relatively uncontentious: ‘Our Democracy, Our Values and Our Consensus’. The Democratic National Convention, for example, embraces ‘Joy’ (repeated endlessly), ‘moving Forward’ and ‘opposing weirdness’ as key statements. They are banal, however, these memes are given their energy and momentum, not by content so much, as by the deliberate Hollywood setting lending them razzamatazz and glamour.
It is not hard to see how this one-dimensional zeitgeist may have contributed to the U.S. and its allies’ misreading the impact of today’s Kursk ‘daring adventure’ on ordinary Russians.
‘Kursk’ has history. In 1943, Germany invaded Russia in Kursk to divert from its own losses, with Germany ultimately defeated at the Battle of Kursk. The return of German military equipment to the environs of Kursk must have left many gaping; the current battlefield around the town of Sudzha is precisely the spot where, in 1943, the Soviet 38th and 40th armies coiled for a counteroffensive against the German 4th Army.
Over the centuries, Russia has been variously attacked on its vulnerable flank from the West. And more recently by Napoleon and Hitler. Unsurprisingly, Russians are acutely sensitive to this bloody history. Did Bill Burns et al think this through? Did they imagine that NATO invading Russia itself would make Putin feel ‘challenged’, and that with one further shove, he would fold, and agree to a ‘frozen’ outcome in Ukraine – with the latter entering NATO? Maybe they did.
Ultimately the message that western services sent was that the West (NATO) is coming for Russia. This is the meaning of deliberately choosing Kursk. Reading the runes of Bill Burns message says prepare for war with NATO.
Just to be clear, this genre of ‘winning narrative’ surrounding Kursk is neither deceit nor feint. The Minsk Accords were examples of deceit, but they were deceits grounded in rational strategy (i.e. they were historically normal). The Minsk deceits were intended to buy the West time to further Ukraine’s militarisation – before attacking the Donbas. The deceit worked, but only at the price of a rupture of trust between Russia and the West. The Minsk deceits however, also accelerated an end to the 200-year era of the westification of Russia.
Kursk rather, is a different ‘fish’. It is grounded in the notions of western exceptionalism. The West perceives itself as tacking to ‘the right side of History’. ‘Winning narratives’ essentially assert – in secular format – the inevitability of the western eschatological Mission for global redemption and convergence. In this new narrative context, facts-on-the-ground become mere irritants, and not realities that must be taken into account.
This their Achilles’ Heel.
The DNC convention in Chicago however, underscored a further concern:………………………………………………………………….
The Kursk ploy no doubt seemed clever and audacious to London and Washington. Yet with what result? It achieved neither objective of taking Kursk NPP, nor of syphoning Russian troops from the Contact Line. The Ukrainian presence in the Kursk Oblast will be eliminated.
What it did do, however, is put an end to all prospects of an eventual negotiated settlement in Ukraine. Distrust of the U.S. in Russia is now absolute. It has made Moscow more determined to prosecute the special operation to conclusion. German equipment visible in Kursk has raised old ghosts, and consolidated awareness of the hostile western intentions toward Russia. ‘Never again’ is the unspoken riposte. https://www.sott.net/article/494279-The-western-way-of-war-Owning-the-narrative-trumps-reality
Ukraine doubles down on Russian reactors in nuclear power push
Politico, August 27, 2024, By Gabriel Gavin
Ukraine will push forward with controversial plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on aging Russian-made nuclear reactors despite growing opposition from lawmakers, the country’s energy minister said, amid warnings of a major power crisis this winter.
German Galushchenko told POLITICO that the government still intends to pursue the expansion of the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power station in western Ukraine, buying two VVER-1000 reactors currently in storage in Bulgaria. The proposal has drawn criticism from the ruling party’s own MPs, who say there are quicker ways to help prop up the electricity grid, which has been hit hard by Russian bombing…………………..
Last week, Ukrainian MPs told POLITICO that the government had been forced to acknowledge it did not have sufficient support in the parliament to pass a draft law legislating for the purchase of the reactors.
According to Andrii Zhupanyn, a lawmaker from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People Party, such defeats are “extremely rare.”
MPs questioned whether the mothballed reactors, bought by Bulgaria more than a decade ago, would be able to be quickly brought into service, and whether the funds could be better spent on renewable power and other sources of electricity. The costs, they said, would likely balloon and open the door to corruption…………………………………………………………………………. https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-russia-reactor-khmelnytskyi-nuclear-power-station/
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