Holding ground, losing war
Zelensky’s strategy of defending territory at all costs has been disastrous for Ukraine.
The American Conservative, Douglas Macgregor, Sep 22, 2022,
At the end of 1942, when the Wehrmacht could advance no further east, Hitler switched German ground forces from an “enemy force-oriented” strategy to a “ground-holding” strategy. Hitler demanded that his armies defend vast, largely empty and irrelevant stretches of Soviet territory.
“Holding ground” not only robbed the German military of its ability to exercise operational discretion, and, above all, to outmaneuver the slow, methodical Soviet opponent; holding ground also pushed German logistics to the breaking point. When holding ground was combined with endless counterattacks to retake useless territory, the Wehrmacht was sentenced to slow, grinding destruction.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, (presumably with the advice of his U.S. and British military advisors), has also adopted a strategy of holding ground in Eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces immobilized themselves inside urban areas, and prepared defenses. As a result, Ukrainian forces turned urban centers into fortifications for what became “last stands.” Sensible withdrawals from cities like Mariupol that might have saved many of Ukraine’s best troops were forbidden.
Russian forces responded by methodically isolating and crushing the defenders left with no possibility of either escape or rescue by other Ukrainian forces.
Moscow’s determination to destroy Ukrainian forces at the least cost to Russian lives prevailed.
Ukrainian casualties were always heavier than reported from the moment Russian troops crossed into Eastern Ukraine, but now, thanks to the recent failure of Ukrainian counterattacks in the Kherson region, they’ve reached horrific levels that are impossible to conceal. Casualty rates have reached 20,000 killed or wounded a month.
Despite the addition of 126 howitzers, 800,000 rounds of artillery rounds, and HIMARS (U.S. rocket artillery), months of hard fighting are eroding the foundations of Ukraine’s ground strength. In the face of this disaster, Zelensky continues to order counterattacks to re-take territory as a means of demonstrating that Ukraine’s strategic position vis-à-vis Russia is not as hopeless as it seems.
The recent Ukrainian advance to the town of Izium, the link between Donbas and Kharkiv, seemed like a gift to Kiev. U.S. satellite arrays undoubtedly provided Ukrainians with a real-time picture of the area showing that Russian forces west of Izium numbered less than 2,000 light troops (the equivalent of paramilitary police, e.g., SWAT and airborne infantry).
The Russian command opted to withdraw its small force from the area that is roughly 1 percent of formerly Ukrainian territory currently under Russian control. However, the price for Kiev’s propaganda victory was high—depending on the source, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 Ukrainian troops were killed or wounded in a flat, open area that Russian artillery, rockets, and air strikes turned into a killing field.
Given Washington’s inability to end the war in Ukraine with the defeat of Russian arms, it seems certain that the Beltway will try instead to turn the ruins of the Ukrainian state into an open wound in Russia’s side that will never heal. From the beginning, the problem with this approach was that Russia always had the resources to dramatically escalate the fighting and end the fighting in Ukraine on very harsh terms. Escalation is now in progress. …………………………..
The defense establishment has a long record of success in tranquilizing American voters with meaningless clichés. As conditions favorable to Moscow develop in Eastern Ukraine and the Russian position in the world grows stronger, Washington confronts a stark choice: Talk about having successfully “degraded Russian power” in Ukraine and scale back its actions. Or risk a regional war with Russia that will engulf Europe. ……………………………… more https://www.theamericanconservative.com/holding-ground-losing-war/
War fears at another Ukraine nuclear site
The Australian 22 Sept 22, A vast crater several metres deep in empty land strewn with wild grass bears witness to the shelling this week at the Pivdennoukrainskpower plant site in southern Ukraine, the latest sign of nuclear risk in the war-scarred nation.
Small shards of grey metal, similar to rocket and missile fragments that litter innumerable fighting-damaged Ukrainian places, dot the loamy earth gouged out by the impact.
“That’s where the blast of the explosion went towards,” said Ivan Zhebet, security chief at the Pivdennoukrainsk plant in the southern Mykolaiv region.
A compass reading by an AFP journalist indicated that it was fired from the southeast, territory under Russian control.
The shell struck shortly after midnight on Monday, just minutes after an air raid warning sounded in nearby Yuzhnourainsk, a town that had until then been relatively calm.
Others said they saw a flash of light in the sky.
All the residents questioned by AFP worried that the nuclear site — which directly provides jobs for 6,000 of the town’s 42,000-strong population and indirectly for many more — would be hit.
Pivdennoukrainskis the third nuclear site to be caught up in a conflict that began with Russia’s invasion in February………………………………………..
Nataliya Stoikova, a department head at Pivdennoukrainsk, said:
“The danger is really frightening. If something were to happen (at Pivdennoukrainsk) or Zaporizhzhia, the accident at Chernobyl would be almost small” by comparison. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/war-fears-at-another-ukraine-nuclear-site/news-story/d81fe91e6bd375729e35eb4caaea2c95
Is Zaporizhzhia safer now?
What is “cold shutdown”? And what about the fuel pools?
Cold shutdown reduces risk of disaster at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – but combat around spent fuel still poses a threat
By Najmedin Meshkati, University of Southern California
Is Zaporizhzhia safer now? — Beyond Nuclear International Energoatom, operator of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, announced on Sept. 11, 2022, that it was shutting down the last operating reactor of the plant’s six reactors, reactor No. 6. The operators have put the reactor in cold shutdown to minimize the risk of a radiation leak from combat in the area around the nuclear power plant.
The Conversation asked Najmedin Meshkati, a professor and nuclear safety expert at the University of Southern California, to explain cold shutdown, what it means for the safety of the nuclear power plant, and the ongoing risks to the plant’s spent fuel, which is uranium that has been largely but not completely depleted by the fission reaction that drives nuclear power plants.
What does it mean to have a nuclear reactor in cold shutdown?
The fission reaction that generates heat in a nuclear power plant is produced by positioning a number of uranium fuel rods in close proximity. Shutting down a nuclear reactor involves inserting control rods between the fuel rods to stop the fission reaction.
The reactor is then in cooldown mode as the temperature decreases. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, once the temperature is below 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93 Celsius) and the reactor coolant system is at atmospheric pressure, the reactor is in cold shutdown.
When the reactor is operating, it requires cooling to absorb the heat and keep the fuel rods from melting together, which would set off a catastrophic chain reaction. When a reactor is in cold shutdown, it no longer needs the same level of circulation. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant uses pressurized water reactors.
How does being in cold shutdown improve the plant’s safety?
The shutdown has removed a huge element of risk. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is a pressurized water reactor. These reactors need constant cooling, and the cooling pumps are gigantic, powerful, electricity-guzzling machines.
Cold shutdown is the state in which you do not need to constantly run the primary cooling pumps at the same level to circulate the cooling water in the primary cooling loop. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported that reactor No. 6 is now in a cold shutdown state like the facility’s five other reactors, and will require less power for cooling. Now, at least if the plant loses offsite power, the operators won’t have to worry about cooling an operating reactor with cranky diesel generators.
And by shutting down reactor No. 6, the plant operators can be relieved of a considerable amount of their workload monitoring the reactors amid the ongoing uncertainties around the site. This substantially reduced the potential for human error.
The operators’ jobs are likely to be much less demanding and stressful now than before. However, they still need to constantly monitor the status of the shutdown reactors and the spent fuel pools.
What are the risks from the spent fuel at the plant?
The plant still needs a reliable source of electricity to cool the six huge spent fuel pools that are inside the containment structures and to remove residual heat from the shutdown reactors. The cooling pumps for the spent fuel pools need much less electricity than the cooling pumps on the reactor’s primary and secondary loops, and the spent fuel cooling system could tolerate a brief electricity outage.
One more important factor is that the spent fuel storage racks in the spent fuel pools at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant were compacted to increase capacity, according to a 2017 Ukrainian government report to the IAEA. The greater number and more compacted the stored spent fuel rods, the more heat they generate and so more power is needed to cool them.
There is also a dry spent fuel storage facility at the plant. Dry spent fuel storage involves packing spent fuel rods into massive cylinders, or casks, which require no water or other coolants. The casks are designed to keep the fuel rods contained for at least 50 years. However, the casks are not under the containment structures at the plant, and, though they were designed to withstand being crashed into by an airliner, it’s not clear whether artillery shelling and aerial bombardment, particularly repeated attacks, could crack open the casks and release radiation into the grounds of the plant.
The closest analogy to this scenario could be a terrorist attack that, according to a seminal study by the National Research Council, could breach a dry cask and potentially result in the release of radioactive material from the spent fuel. This could happen through the dispersion of fuel particles or fragments or the dispersion of radioactive aerosols. This would be similar to the detonation of a “dirty bomb,” which, depending on wind direction and dispersion radius, could result in radioactive contamination. This in turn could cause serious problems for access to and work in the plant.
Next steps from the IAEA and UN
The IAEA has called on Russia and Ukraine to set up a “safety and security protection zone” around the plant. However, the IAEA is a science and engineering inspectorate and technical assistance agency. Negotiating and establishing a protection zone at a nuclear power plant in a war zone is entirely unprecedented and totally different from all past IAEA efforts.
Establishing a protection zone requires negotiations and approvals at the highest political and military levels in Kyiv and Moscow. It could be accomplished through backchannel, Track II-type diplomacy, specifically nuclear safety-focused engineering diplomacy. In the meantime, the IAEA needs strong support from the United Nations Security Council in the form of a resolution, mandate or the creation of a special commission.
Najmedin Meshkati, Professor of Engineering and International Relations, University of Southern California
Hundreds Of Children Included In Ukrainian Public Kill-List
International organizations remain silent while children are threatened by Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime.
thefreeonline by Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Despite many complaints, appeals and critiques, the infamous Ukrainian website “Myrotvorets” remains active on the internet.
The site exposes the personal data of thousands of people considered enemies by the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime, making it the largest public kill-list ever witnessed.
Journalist Olesya Buzina shot dead in Kiev Western media’s invented ‘Narrative’ ignores Ukraine’s public Kill List: ’12 journalists killed already’- must be deleted!
The most terrible point of this situation is that hundreds of ethnic Russian children are included in this list. Russian diplomats demand a position on the part of UNICEF on the matter, but international organizations remain silent.
“Publishing personal data, addresses and phone numbers, on minors is a crime. It’s like a menu for pedophiles or people doing human trafficking.”
Although Myrotvorets is officially an NGO, in practice it operates in a fully integrated manner with the Ukrainian government. The very purpose of the site is to provide a database of alleged “enemies” of the Ukrainian state, thus being much more of a Kiev intelligence department than an NGO.
The website project started precisely in 2014, as well as the beginning of the ethnic and political persecution against Russian citizens and Maidan’s opponents.
The word LIQUIDATED was placed on the entry of Russian photojournalist Andrei Stenin after his murder and many others listed and subsequently killed, including the Italian Andrea Rocchelli.
Also, it must be noted that many of the people included in the list were actually murdered, such as Russian journalist Daria Dugina, which shows that Ukrainian intelligence forces really use the data provided by Myrotvorets and try to “fulfill” the kill-list proposed by the website.
However, what is most shocking in this issue is the presence of children on this list. The Ukrainian government and its allied neo-Nazi organizations do not seem to distinguish who actually poses a threat to the Maidan’s political regime and who does not.
For them, everyone who opposes the government and publicly expresses their critical opinions must be exterminated, even innocent civilians and children.
According to a recent data survey by journalist Mira Terada, at least 327 children would have had their personal data exposed by Myrotvorets. Considering that Ukrainian forces really try to kill those on this list, the lives of these children are in danger.
Investigations into this topic increased after Faina Savekova, a 12-year-old girl from Lugansk, was added to the list for posting letters on the internet expressing pride for the Russian identity of her people and criticism against the current Ukrainian policies in her region.
After her data was exposed, Faina asked the UN for help, even writing letters to the Secretary General, which were never answered.
Russian journalist Veronika Naydenova, originally from Crimea but living in Germany, was added to the list in January, also after raising the inclusion of children, including 13-year-old Faina Savenkova, from the Lugansk People’s Republic.
“The same day my article was published, I was added to the list. But this hasn’t stopped me, I’ve written many articles since.”
UNICEF, which would be the UN office responsible for caring for children, also remained silent, showing the omission of international organizations in the face of the serious Ukrainian problem.
Currently, we know that Faina is just one of hundreds of children in the kill-list, but that has not changed the international silence.
On September 14, Russian diplomat at the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy made some comments on this matter on his social media. He criticized the omission on the part of the UN and called on UNICEF to comment on the case.
Polyanskiy was realistic and said that he does not expect legal or coercive action against Ukraine, but only a simple formal condemnation for these acts…………………….
Considering recent Ukraine’s history, in which murders, massacres of civilians and terrorist attacks have become commonplace, it is possible to say that these 327 children, as well as the thousands of other innocent people exposed by the site, are indeed in danger………………….. https://thefreeonline.com/2022/09/17/waiting-to-die-hundreds-of-children-included-in-ukrainian-public-kill-list/
In effect if not juridically, Ukraine was becoming a member of the NATO alliance. THE WORLD SPLIT APART
THE WORLD SPLIT APART 2.0: Introduction Russian & Eurasian Politics, GORDON M. HAHN 21 Sept 22,
Nearly a decade ago I began warning that NATO expansion and the West’s failure to understand that Russian national security interests not a Russian desire to ‘recreate the USSR’ or ‘former Russian empire’ would lead to a world split apart between the West and ‘the rest’ (Sino-Russian ‘strategic partnership and those states oriented towards it).…………………………………………………………………………..
NATO expansion to Ukraine continued with Ukrainian membership replaced by deep Western and NATO involvement in Ukraine’s politics and military and gradually deepening after the 2014 Maidan revolt. In effect if not juridically, Ukraine was becoming a member of the NATO alliance.
In this regard, it is important to point out that the famous Article 5 of the NATO Charter is not a blanket, mandatory obligation to engage directly in military action in defense of an alliance member under attack by an alliance non-member state. It merely requires consultations and assistance, which can but does not necessarily have to be the commitment of member-states’ forces directly to the battlefield.
Assistance can include the provision of weapons, training, intelligence, and other forms of indirect assistance. This was already happening in Ukraine as a result of NATO policies. Russian President responded with his invasion rapidly to both escalating that level of NATO military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine and accelerating the bifurcation of the world between the West and the rest.
For all intents and purposes NATO and the entire West are at war with Russia and escalation to a more direct confrontation is just over the horizon. This course of events has deepened and consolidated the Sino-Russian alliance by any other name and that alliance’s efforts to rally to its side the rest of the rest. The world is becoming split apart as never before – an outcome globalization was not supposed to being about. The ‘new cold war’ is driving towards a greater bifurcation of the world into two camps than the confrontation between communism and capitalism ever engendered. Continuation to follow. https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/33462456/posts/4272028238
THE WORLD SPLIT APART 2.0: Introduction — Russian & Eurasian Politics
Offsite power supply to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant destroyed
Offsite power supply to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant destroyed
Guardian Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv, 10 Sept 22,
A vital offsite electricity supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been destroyed by shelling and there is little likelihood a reliable supply will be re-established, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog chief has said.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said shelling had destroyed the switchyard of a nearby thermal power plant.
The plant has supplied power to the nuclear facility each time its normal supply lines had been cut over the past three weeks. The thermal plant was also supplying the surrounding area, which was plunged into darkness.
Local Ukrainian officials said work was under way to restore the connection, which has been cut multiple times this week.
Grossi, who said he had been informed of the situation by IAEA representatives at the plant, called for an “immediate cessation of all shelling in the entire area”. “This is an unsustainable situation and is becoming increasingly precarious,” he said, without apportioning blame for the shelling.
Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for shelling near Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine and within the perimeter of Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, which has six reactors.
The thermal supply has been cut and restored multiple times this week and Enerhodar, the nearby town, has suffered several complete blackouts.
When the thermal supply has been cut the plant has relied on its only remaining operating reactor for the power needed for cooling and other safety functions. This method is designed to provide power only for a few hours at a time. Diesel generators are used as a last resort. The constant destruction of thermal power supply has led Ukraine to consider shutting down the remaining operating reactor, said Grossi. Ukraine “no longer [has] confidence in the restoration of offsite power”, he said.
Grossi said that if Ukraine decided not to restore the offsite supply the entire power plant would be reliant on emergency diesel generators to ensure supplies for the nuclear safety and security functions.
“As a consequence, the operator would not be able to restart the reactors unless offsite power was reliably re-established,” he said…………….. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/09/offsite-power-supply-to-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-destroyed
All 6 reactors at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant now completely stopped operating
Operations at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine
have been fully stopped as a safety measure, Energoatom, the state agency
in charge of the plant, said. The plant “is completely stopped” after thec
agency disconnected the number 6 power unit from the grid at 3.41am (local
time), it said in a statement. “Preparations are under way for its cooling
and transfer to a cold state.”
RTE 11th Sept 2022
https://www.rte.ie/news/ukraine/2022/0911/1321783-ukraine-russia/
Ukraine Considers Shutting Nuclear Plant After Loss of Backup Power
After shelling destroys key electricity supply, Zaporizhzhia facility may have to rely on generators with 10 days of fuel left
WSJ, By Drew Hinshaw and Laurence Norman Sept. 9, 2022
Ukraine is considering shutting down the sole remaining reactor at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday, after shelling left the plant without a safe and sustainable source of backup power.
The plant, which has already shut down five of its six reactors, risks having only one remaining source of electricity to power its systems in case the sixth reactor has to go offline, said Director General Rafael Grossi in a statement..
Normally, if the plant can’t supply itself power,
it can draw electricity from a nearby thermal-energy plant. But shelling
overnight Thursday destroyed a switchyard that carries electricity out from
that coal-fired plant, Mr. Grossi said.
It is unlikely that it will be
repaired, he added, given the constant artillery fire, meaning the nuclear
plant would have no off-site emergency source of power. The plant could
turn to back up generators, but those only have enough fuel for about 10
days, according to Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear company, Energoatom. The
plant, occupied by Russian soldiers who patrol with grenades dangling off
their belts, is still operated by the company’s Ukrainian workforce.
Plant workers, meanwhile, have no electricity in their homes and the
shelling risks accelerating an exodus of essential staff. “This is an
unsustainable situation and is becoming increasingly precarious,” Mr.
Grossi said. “The power plant has no off-site power, This is completely
unacceptable. It cannot stand. ”The Zaporizhzhia plant is now producing a
minimal 250 megawatts, enough to monitor and sustain the temperature of its
cooling ponds, to pump water through the station, to clean the air inside
the plant, and to perform other basic safety functions, said Petro Kotin,
interim president of Energoatom.
If the last operating reactor goes down,
he said, the staff will need to supply 200 tons of diesel daily to the
generators. The IAEA said in a report Tuesday Ukraine had 2,250 tons of
diesel fuel available for the whole site. Procuring more would require
several truckloads of fuel to cross through an active conflict area
subjected to continual artillery fire, many times a day. Nuclear experts
said it could make sense to shut down the last reactor and work off backup
generators, because the earlier that is done, the cooler the reactor core
would be if Zaporizhzhia’s generators run out of fuel and there is an
accident.
Workers reached by The Wall Street Journal have blamed the
artillery fire on Russia. Plant technicians, backed by European officials
and independent nuclear analysts, have said the shelling serves the
Kremlin’s broader goal of severing Zaporizhzhia’s power connection to
Ukraine’s remaining territory and eventually rerouting it into
Russian-held areas. Russian soldiers have laid land mines around the
plant’s cooling ponds, parked heavy artillery near its reactors, and
turned its safety shelters—meant for plant workers to flee to in an
emergency—into a bunker for themselves, workers say.
When IAEA inspectors
visited the plant last week, they found that the alternative emergency
center that Russian soldiers offered the staff didn’t have its own
ventilation system to filter out radiation from the air, or its own source
of power—or even an internet connection.
Shutting down the plant, in the
midst of an active conflict, would pose enormous and unprecedented
challenges for the nuclear industry. Defunct or dormant nuclear plants
still require electricity and careful maintenance by trained staff to
monitor and safeguard spent nuclear fuel, among other safety operations.
The plant currently suffers obstacles sourcing the spare parts and fuel
that would be required. Compounding difficulties, the Zaporizhzhia plant
has seen a considerable amount of its workforce flee, slipping out through
Russian checkpoints to Ukrainian-held ground.
Wall Street Journal 10th Sept 2022 https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-considers-shutting-nuclear-plant-after-loss-of-backup-power-11662747396
Here’s why the risk of a nuclear accident in Ukraine has ‘significantly increased’
https://www.wboi.org/npr-news/npr-news/2022-09-09/heres-why-the-risk-of-a-nuclear-accident-in-ukraine-has-significantly-increased By Geoff Brumfiel, September 9, 2022, The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is warning that the risk of a nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has “significantly increased,” following ongoing fighting around the site.
“Let me be clear, the shelling around Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant must stop,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a brief recorded statement released on Friday.
Grossi also warned that the continued fighting might require the plant to shut down its last operating reactor. That would set into motion a chain of events that could intensify the current nuclear crisis. Here’s how.
Nuclear plants need electricity
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is the largest in Europe, capable of producing thousands of megawatts of electricity. But the plant also needs power from the same electricity grid it feeds.
The power is used to run the various parts of the plant, including its safety and cooling systems. Specifically, nuclear power plants require water to be pumped constantly through their cores in order to function safely, and the pumps need electricity.
At Zaporizhzhia, the power is normally supplied by four high-voltage lines, which connect the nuclear complex to Ukraine’s electricity grid, but the conflict has seen those lines systematically cut. The last 750kV line was severed on September 3, according to the IAEA.
A backup line was disconnected two days later due to a fire on the site. In a press conference shortly after returning from Zaporizhzhia, Grossi told reporters that he believed the power lines were being deliberately targeted:
Zaporizhzhia has been making its own power, but that’s a limited solution
Since losing its last connection to the grid on Sept. 5, the nuclear plant has been powering itself in so-called “islanding operation mode.” Under this setup, the Unit 6 reactor has been producing low levels of electricity that are running the rest of the facility.
The reactors at Zaporizhzhia are designed to operate in this mode during startup, according to a nuclear engineer who worked directly with the reactors when the plant began operations in the 1980s, but who was not authorized to speak publicly by his current employer.
“It’s not good, it cannot be done for a long time,” he says. The problem is less to do with the reactor itself than the turbine, generators and other systems–all of which are designed to run at significantly higher power levels than islanding operation mode provides.
Adding to the problem, Grossi said in his statement, is the increasing strain on the plant’s Ukrainian operators. Many of the plant’s current staff of just under 1,000 live in the nearby town of Enerhodar. Its water, sewage and electrical supplies have all been disrupted in recent days by the same fighting that’s damaged the lines around the plant.
“The shelling is putting in danger operators and their families, making it difficult to adequately staff the plant,” Grossi says.
Shutting down the last reactor will trigger emergency generators
With conditions deteriorating, it seems more likely that Ukrainian authorities will decide to power down the last reactor. But in the short term, that could exacerbate the crisis.
That’s because nuclear reactors are more like charcoal grills than gas stoves. Even after they’re shut off, they remain hot for a long period of time. Water must still circulate in the cores to prevent a meltdown.
With its reactors shut down, Zaporizhzhia will switch to backup emergency diesel generators to keep the reactors cool. The emergency generators themselves are a tried-and-true method for cooling a nuclear reactor. In fact, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires U.S. plants to switch to emergency diesel generators immediately, bypassing the “islanding operation mode” used in Zaporizhzhia.
“We don’t want to go on the diesel generators, but it’s a situation you can abide by for awhile,” says Steven Nesbit, a nuclear engineer and member of the American Nuclear Society’s rapid response taskforce, which is tracking the current crisis. For example, after losing power during Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the Turkey Point Nuclear Plant in Florida operated for days on emergency diesel power.
If the generators run out of fuel, a meltdown could occur
Continue readingZelensky and NATO plan to transform post-war Ukraine into ‘a big Israel’.
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/17/zelensky-nato-ukraine-big-israel/— ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN·SEPTEMBER 17, 2022
The NATO-backed Atlantic Council has proposed apartheid Israel as a blueprint for a hyper-militarized Ukraine. The paper was authored by Obama’s former ambassador to Tel Aviv, now an Israeli spy-tech consultant.
Just forty days after Russia’s military campaign began inside Ukraine, Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky told reporters that in the future, his country would be like “a big Israel.” The following day, one of Israel’s top promoters in the Democratic Party published an op-ed in NATO’s official think tank exploring how that could be executed.
Zelensky made his prediction while speaking to reporters on April 5, rejecting the idea that Kiev would remain neutral in future conflicts between NATO, the European Union, and Russia. According to Zelensky, his country would never be like Switzerland (which coincidentally abandoned its Napoleon-era tradition of nonalignment by sanctioning Russia in response to its February invasion).
“We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future,’” the president informed reporters. “But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”
For those wondering what a “big Israel” would actually look like, Zelensky quickly elaborated on his disturbing prophecy.
“We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas — there will be people with weapons,” Ukraine’s president said, predicting a bleak existence for his citizens. “I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.”
Though the web post was based on comments Zelensky made to reporters, the president’s office mysteriously excised a section of his remarks in which he declared a future Ukraine would not be “absolutely liberal, European.” Instead, along with his vision for a heavily militarized Ukraine, the post emphasized Zelensky’s readiness to join NATO “already tomorrow.”
For NATO’s power brokers, however, Zelensky’s intimated willingness to join the military alliance was perhaps the least remarkable aspect of his statement. Instead, within 48 hours of his comments, the Atlantic Council – NATO’s semi-official think tank in Washington – published a “road map” exploring how to transform Ukraine into “a big Israel.”
Authored by Daniel B. Shapiro, the former US Ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, the document posited that “the two embattled countries share more than you might think.”
Just as former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig presented Israel as “the largest American air craft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk,” Shapiro put forward a vision of Ukraine as a hyper-militarized NATO bastion whose national identity would be defined by its ability to project US power against Russia.
Despite Israel’s reluctance to join the Western sanctions campaign against Russia, it has aided Ukraine’s militarily, sending two large shipments of defensive equipment since February of this year. In the past, however, Israel’s support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia has been more than defensive.
Back in 2018, over 40 human rights activists petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice to stop arming Ukraine after members of the neo-nazi Azov Battalion were caught brandishing Israeli-made weapons. As Israel’s Ha’aretz noted at the time, “The militia’s [Azov] emblems are well-known national socialist ones. Its members use the Nazi salute and carry swastikas and SS insignias… One militia member said in an interview that he was fighting Russia since Putin was a Jew.”
Zelensky, a Ukrainian Jew, was apparently unperturbed by Israel’s alleged arming of Nazi elements in his country. One year after his 2019 election, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to launch what he called a “prayer for peace,” and to attend an event entitled “Remember the Holocaust to fight anti-Semitism.” Ahead of the junket, Zelensky heaped praise on Israeli society, remarking in an interview that “Jews managed to build a country, to elevate it, without anything except people and brains,” and that Israelis are a “united, strong, powerful people. And despite being under the threat of war, they enjoy every day. I’ve seen it.”
Caitlin Johnstone: Ukraine crawling with CIA & Co
https://johnmenadue.com/caitlin-johnstone-ukraine-crawling-with-cia-co/ 17 Sept 22
The previously unthinkable idea that the U.S. is at war with Russia has been gradually normalised, with the heat turned up so slowly that the frog doesn’t notice it’s being boiled alive.
The New York Times reports that Ukraine is crawling with special forces and spies from the U.S. and its allies, which would seem to contradict earlier reports that the U.S. intelligence cartel is having trouble getting intel about what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine.
This would also, obviously, put the final nail in the coffin of the claim that this is not a U.S. proxy war.
In an article headlined “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say,” anonymous Western officials inform us of the following through their stenographers at The New York Times:
“As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.
Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the massive amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.
At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine.”
he revelation that the C.I.A. and U.S. special forces are conducting military operations in Ukraine does indeed make a lie of the Biden administration’s insistence at the start of the war that there would be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine. And the admission that NATO powers are so involved in operations against a nuclear superpower means, we are closer to seeing a nuclear exchange than anyone should be comfortable with.
This news should surprise no one who knows anything about the usual behaviour of the U.S. intelligence cartel, but interestingly it contradicts something we were told by the same New York Times not three weeks ago.
“American intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures,” The New York Times told us earlier this month. “U.S. officials said the Ukrainian government gave them few classified briefings or details about their operational plans, and Ukrainian officials acknowledged that they did not tell the Americans everything.”
It seems a bit unlikely that U.S. intelligence agencies would have a hard time getting information about what’s happening in a country where they themselves are physically located. Moon of Alabama theorised at the time that this ridiculous, “We don’t know what’s happening in our own proxy war” line was being pushed to give the U.S. plausible deniability about Ukraine’s failures on the battlefield, which have only gotten worse since then.
So why are they telling us all this now? Well, it could be that we’re being paced into accepting an increasingly direct role of the U.S. and its allies in Ukraine.
The other day Antiwar’s Daniel Larison tweeted, “Hawks in April: Don’t call it a proxy war! Hawks in May: Of course it’s a proxy war! Hawks in June: It’s not their war, it’s our war!”
This is indeed exactly how it happened. Back in April President Joe Biden told the press the idea that this is a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia was “not true” and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said “It’s not, this is clearly Ukraine’s fight” when asked if this is a proxy war. The mainstream media were still framing this claim as merely an “accusation” by the Russian government and empire spinmeisters were regularly admonishing anyone who used that term on the grounds that it deprives Ukrainians of their “agency.”
Then May rolled around and all of a sudden we had The New Yorker unequivocally telling us that the U.S. is in “a full proxy war with Russia” and hawks like U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton saying things like,
“We’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians. We’re fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy, with Russia, and it’s important that we win.”
And now here in June we’ve got war hawks like Max Boot coming right out and saying that this is actually America’s war, and it is therefore important for the U.S. to drastically escalate it in order to hand the Russians “devastating losses.”
So, the previously unthinkable idea that the U.S. is at war with Russia has been gradually normalised, with the heat turned up so slowly that the frog doesn’t notice it’s being boiled alive. If that idea can be sufficiently normalised, public consent for greater escalations will likely be forthcoming, even if those escalations are extremely psychotic.
Back in March when I said the only “agency” Ukraine has in this conflict is the Central Intelligence one, empire loyalists jumped down my throat. They couldn’t believe I was saying something so evil and wrong. Now they’ve been told that the Central Intelligence Agency is indeed conducting operations and directing intelligence on the ground in Ukraine, but I somehow doubt that this will stir any self-reflection on their part.
U.S. Finally Admits Ukraine Bombs Zaporizhzhia’s Nuclear Power Plant.
The Duran, by Eric Zuesse, September 15, 2022, Unnamed American officials, according to the New York Times, have admitted that the explosives fired against Ukraine’s nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia have been fired against the plant by Ukraine’s Government, not by Russia’s Government, and furthermore these officials make clear that Ukraine’s attacks against the plant are a key part of Ukraine’s plan to win its U.S.-backed-and-advised war against Russia, on the battlefields of Ukraine, using Ukrainian soldiers.
Zaporizhzhia is a city in Ukraine that is in Russian-controlled territory, and Ukraine’s strategy is to destroy the ability of the plant to function, so that areas controlled by Russia will no longer be able to benefit from that plant’s electrical-power output. The United States Government helped Ukraine’s Government to come up with this plan, according to the New York Times.
This information was buried by the Times, 85% of the way down a 1,600-word news-report they published on September 13th, titled “The Critical Moment Behind Ukraine’s Rapid Advance”, in which it stated that, “Eventually, Ukrainian officials believe their long-term success requires progress on the original goals in the discarded strategy, including recapturing the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, cutting off Russian forces in Mariupol and pushing Russian forces in Kherson back across the Dnipro River, American officials said.”
When IAEA inspectors arrived at that plant on September 1st, after a lengthy period of trying to get there to inspect it but which was blocked by Ukraine’s Government, and the IAEA started delivering reports regarding what they were finding at the plant, no mention has, as-of yet, been made concerning which of the two warring sides has been firing those bombs into the plant.
Even when the IAEA headlined on September 9th “Director General’s Statement on Serious Situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant”, and reported that the plant’s ability to operate “has been destroyed by shelling of the switchyard at the city’s thermal power plant, leading to a complete power black-out in” the entire region, and that “This is completely unacceptable. It cannot stand.”, and closed by saying they “urgently call for the immediate cessation of all shelling in the entire area,” no mention was made as to which of the two sides was shooting into the plant in order to disable it, and which of the two sides was firing out from the plant in order to protect it against that incoming fire.
Previously known was only that the city of Zaporizhzhia has been and is under Russian control ever since March 4th. Consequently, all news-media and reporters have known that (since Russia was inside and Ukraine was outside) Russia has been defending the plant and Ukraine has been attacking it, but until “American officials” let slip, in this news-report, the fact that this has indeed been the case there, no Western news-medium has previously published this fact — not even buried it in a news-report.
So, although nothing in this regard may yet be considered to be official, or neutral, or free of fear or of actual intent to lie, there finally is, at the very least, buried in that news-report from the New York Times, a statement that is sourced to “American officials,” asserting that this is the case, and the Times also lets slip there that this “shelling” of that plant is an important part of the joint U.S.-Ukraine master-plan to defeat Russia in Ukraine.
It is part of the same master-plan, which the U.S. Government recommended to Ukraine’s Government, and which also included the recent successful retaking by Ukraine of Russian-controlled land near the major Ukrainian city of Kharkov, which city’s recapture by Ukraine is also included in the master-plan. Both operations — the shelling of the nuclear power plant, and the recapture of that land near Kharkov — were parts of that master-plan, according to the New York Times.
The Times report asserts that
Long reluctant to share details of their plans, the Ukrainian commanders started opening up more to American and British intelligence officials and seeking advice. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, spoke multiple times about the planning for the counteroffensive, according to a senior administration official. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and senior Ukrainian military leaders regularly discussed intelligence and military support.
And in Kyiv, Ukrainian and British military officials continued working together while the new American defense attaché, Brig. Gen. Garrick Harmon, began having daily sessions with Ukraine’s top officers.
Back-up power lines restored to the shut-down Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station
Ukrainian operators of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station won’t restart
the plant until its occupying Russian forces leave the facility, the head
of Ukraine’s nuclear agency, Petro Kotin, tells NPR.
Ukrainian workers powered down the war-damaged plant last weekend for safety reasons amid
continued shelling. On Tuesday, workers finished restoring all three backup
power lines — a sliver of good news at the plant that officials and
energy experts have warned could face a catastrophe as fighting continues
around it.
Still, the situation remains tense and unpredictable at
Zaporizhzhia — Europe’s largest nuclear plant, which has been occupied by
Russian troops since early March but is operated mostly by Ukrainian staff
— and concerns about the risk of a nuclear disaster are still looming as
fighting picked up in that part of southern Ukraine.
NPR 15th Sept 2022
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/15/1122908577/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-operator-russia
Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Ukrainian lawmakers to drop media bill
https://cpj.org/2022/09/cpj-calls-on-ukrainian-lawmakers-to-drop-media-bill/ Paris, September 13, 2022 – In response to media reports that Ukraine’s parliament passed in its first reading on August 30 a media bill that threatens to restrict press freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement calling for the bill to be dropped:
“Ukraine’s media bill seriously imperils press freedom in the country by tightening government control over information at a time when citizens need it the most,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Ukrainian legislators should abandon the bill, or at least pause its progress in parliament until the European Union can weigh in with recommendations.”
Ukraine, a candidate to join the EU, is required to reform its media laws–many of which were implemented in the 1990s–in order to begin negotiations for membership. Matti Maasikas, the head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, said in an interview published on August 23 that the bill was currently under evaluation by the EU and the Council of Europe, which could issue recommendations by the end of September.
The bill has the support of members of the ruling party, which has a majority in the Verkhovna Rada, the country’s parliament. To become law, it would need to pass two more readings in parliament and then be approved by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
As of September 13, the website of the Verkhovna Rada did not indicate the date of the second reading. “They have 21 days [after the first reading] to make amendments. But then it can take a month or up to the end of the year to be approved,” Sergiy Tomilenko, the head of the Ukrainian National Union of Journalists (NUJU), a local trade group, told CPJ via messaging app.
If passed, the legislation would expand the powers of the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting, the state broadcasting regulator, allowing it to regulate online and print outlets, invalidate the registration and license of any media outlet, block online media without a court order, and request that social media platforms and web browsers remove content forbidden under the law, according to multiple media reports.
According to an analysis posted on Telegram by NUJU, only 10% of the bill directly addressed commitments that Ukraine has undertaken as a candidate to join the EU. “The rest reflects the authorities’ desire to have more influence on the media: to issue injunctions, fines, and shut them down,” Tomilenko said in a statement NUJU posted to Telegram.
The new bill was amended only a few weeks before the vote, without a preliminary discussion with journalists and members of the media, Tomilenko said in the same statement.
CPJ emailed the Verkhovna Rada for comment, but did not receive any reply.
Ukraine cracks downs on civilians – official
Amazingly, this is reported also in the Washington Post – article headed:
“Ukraine hit squads are killing Russian occupiers and collaborators“
(I can’t read this – as it’s behind a paywall.)
https://www.rt.com/russia/562619-ukraine-crackdown-kharkov-russia/ 12 Sept 22, Kiev’s forces “are shooting people” in the north of Kharkov region, pro-Russian local authorities claim.
The Ukrainian military has unleashed repressions on the civilian population in Kharkov region, with mercenaries executing people on the streets to frame Russia, a local official claimed on Monday.
“The Ukrainian Armed Forces have occupied settlements in the north of the Kharkov region. They have started repressive actions,” Vitaly Ganchev, the head of pro-Russian administration, said.
Speaking to Russian media, he said local residents who managed to escape from the areas retaken by Kiev’s forces, described Ukrainian “mercenaries that are driving around and shooting people while filming it on camera.”
“As I see it, they want to cleanse these towns, and to portray it as if the Russian troops are behind it, to allege that it was them who had committed these atrocities,” he said.
He added that in many cases residents could no longer cross the Russia-Ukraine border due to the Ukrainian military presence, with many civilians forced into hiding.
Nevertheless, according to Ganchev, more than 5,000 people have been evacuated to Russia in recent days, with local authorities doing their best to fast-track the process.
Ganchev’s comments echo remarks made by Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), who claimed on Sunday that Kiev’s forces were cracking down on the civilian population in areas from which Russian forces had retreated.
“The Ukrainian authorities have confirmed their neo-Nazi nature. In Kharkov region, in a number of cases Ukrainian intelligence services set up purges and repressions against the civilian population“, he claimed.
The comments came after Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations said last week it would conduct a “filtration” of civilians in Balakleya, a town in Kharkov region that’s been retaken by Kiev’s forces.
The purpose of these efforts is to “prevent the subversive activities of the Russians and their allies” and retaliate against those “who cooperated with aggressors,” the agency said at the time.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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