Kyiv/Kharkiv/Lviv, Ukraine (CI Ukraine) – President Joe Biden and NATO leaders must prepare their military forces for a rapid and total intervention to stop Russia for even considering creating a nuclear incident at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).
[International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks to Capitol Intelligence/CI Ukraine using CI Glass regarding the catastrophic risk of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in occupied Ukraine — the largest nuclear plant in Europe — at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on March 14, 2023, in Washington DC]
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi was forced to rush off to Kyiv and the Zaporizhzhia to ensure the continued safety of ZNPP after the Russian decision to blow-up the Kakhovka dam in the Kherson region, one of the main sources of coolant for the plant’s nuclear reactors.
The destruction of Kakhovka, and the subsequent ecological and economical disaster for large swath of southern Ukraine, has military commanders believing Russian President Vladmir Putin may order or not thwart a serious nuclear incident at the ZNPP, a nuclear plant six times the size of Chernobyl.
A nuclear incident, radiating a large area around Zaporizhzhia, would not only live some of Ukraine’s most fertile agriculture land barren for decades but also trigger catastrophic economic event in both Russia and Europe not seen since the Great Depression.
Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who only speaks when absolutely necessary, warned that a Ukrainian defeat to Russia would be the end the of European Union.
“The European Union’s existential values are peace, freedom, and respect of democratic sovereignty. They are the values that emerged after the bloodbath of World War II. And that is why there is no alternative for the US, Europe and its allies to ensuring that Ukraine wins this war,” Draghi said in a speech to his alma mater MIT in Boston on June 9, 2023
Alexander Shtaynberger, the New York-based Ukrainian American chief risk officer for the London-based Laidlaw & Co wealth management group, said financial markets have greatly underestimated the risk of a ZNPP incident after having overestimated the risk a US debt default.
The lack of immediate action — both in military preparedness and new economic sanctions — by NATO allies and G-7 members has only multiplied the risk ZNPP will be used by Russian forces as an ultimate “scorched-earth” weapon ahead of an inevitable defeat by Ukraine.
The decision to destroy the Kakhovka dam signifies that Putin and the Russian military command no longer believe that they will be able to defend the Crimean peninsula, the sole reason behind the Russian invasion of February 24, 2022 and not the creation of a mythical “Novorossiya” confederation of ethno-Russians spouted by Moscow propagandists based on National Bolshevik beliefs invented by Russian confidence artists such as the late Eduard Limonov and its so-called philosopher, Alexander Dugin.
In fact, Russia’s war of aggression has almost exclusively reigned death and destruction on Ukrainian Russian mother tongue speakers like the poor working class ex-Soviet ghetto of Saltovka in Kharkiv, some 30 kilometers from the Russian border.
During a recent visit of the neighborhood that took the brunt of Russian shelling, residents are still living in half bombed out apartment buildings like German city dweller in the aftermath of WWII.
Russia’s single goal in the war was to make sure that Crimea could operate independently from Ukrainian and thus invaded the area around the Azov Sea and Kherson to create a land bridge with mainland Russia and guaranteed water supplies.
The destruction of the Kakhovka dam, built in the Soviet times to transform Crimea into an agriculture economy, means that Russia no longer believes it will be able to defend the area it illegally annexed from Ukraine (under international and Russian law) in 2014.
One of the leading front-line commanders for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) noted that no military force has ever effectively defended the Crimean Peninsula from a land-based invasion.
President Barack Obama made a fatal mistake in 2014 by listening to his then US Secretary of State John Kerry, and holdovers loyal to Hillary Clinton, of not ordering all US forces in Europe to immediately mobilize to NATO countries surrounding Ukraine when Russian mercenaries, ie green men of the mercenary group Wagner, began appearing in Crimea.
[Secretary of State John Kerry filmed by Capitol Intelligence/CI MENA using CI Glass leaving Hotel Regina Baglioni to hold Middle East peace talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as part of ISPI (Institute for International Political Studies) summit in Rome. December 2, 2016]
President Biden can avoid repeating the same mistake, and a global catastrophe, by ordering that all US military personnel be placed on the highest military alert and be prepared to combat Russian forces if they even prepare to create a nuclear incident at ZNPP or use “battlefield” tactical weapons against Ukrainian forces.
Only 94 kilometers from the Ukraine border, four US Patriot missile batteries stand guard at the Rzeszów–Jasionka Airport (RZE) along with a large contingent of US soldiers and NATO partners.
A prominent Ukraine business leader and former Soviet nuclear missile force officer claimed that Putin will never order the launch of traditional nuclear weapons.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has already signaled to the West and others that it no longer backs Russia’s lost cause war in Ukraine and that China’s national interest lies in the strength and stability of international markets.
Confirmation of the lack of Chinese support for Putin’s war can be witnessed in the dramatic job in Chinese funder disinformation on Facebook and twitter and moderating views by leading war apologists such as former US Ambassador to Moscow, Jack Matlock, University of Chicago poitical scientist John Mearsheimer, Sillicon Valley venture capitalist David Sacks and former US Secretary of State and paid Chinese government consultant, Henry Kissinger.
Another prominent anti-Ukraine voice that has been removed in Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, albeit for losing Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch nearly $800 million to settle a defamation brought by the Canadian owned Dominion Voting Systems.
According to sources close to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, Tucker Carlson anti-Ukraine rhetoric was motivated in making money for his father, Richard Warner Carlson, who works as a lobbyist for the Hungarian government of Victor Orban.
The head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, Amb. James Rubin, said while Russia and China are coordinating their propaganda and disinformation campaigns, US citizens are free to express their views under First Amendment free speech protection.
[21st Century Fox (NASDAQ: FOXA) and News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS) Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch speaks to Capitol Intelligence/Black Business News (BBN) using CI Glass on AT&T (NYSE:T) for Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit in Washington, DC. November 15, 2016]
The front-line Ukraine commander said the Chinese are spying on all Russian military activity in the war, while US Marines Brigadier General Mark Clingan at the Pentagon is studying Ukraine’s success in decentralized combat units and logistics for future US warfare.
The loss of Crimea and the Russian Black Sea fleet is not the least of Putin’s nightmares. A very real nightmare for Putin and any future Russian government will be ensuring the integrity and sovereignty of the Russian federation post-conflict.
The vision of Russia broken-up into nine new independent Republics, first espoused by President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski is receiving an ever more welcomed reception among some pro-Ukraine allies. In fact, the London-based leader of the Chechen resistance, Ahmed Zakayev, has been meeting with numerous Ukrainian leaders and influencers setting out his vision of a Russia broken-up in new independent states.
The readiness of the United States and other NATO members to intervene can quicken the end the fratricidal war and the resignation or removal Putin from power. It is almost universally agreed that Putin would agree to an unconditional surrender if he could cast it as a military defeat by the United States rather than by what he sees a rogue gang of inferior Ukrainians.
He can also argue that he resigned to preserve the Russian federation, the same reason President Boris Yeltsin appointed him as his successor in 1999.
Ideally, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin will be able to hold three-way talks as caretaker president with Biden and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in Camp David to end the war and forge a permanent peace agreement between Russia and its neighbor, Ukraine. Mishustin has purposely refrained from publicly supporting Putin’s war efforts, casting himself as a technocratic manager.
The Camp David peace talks should be ultimately signed in Yalta between President Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Zelensky. Such a signing would erase from history the ignominious Yalta Conference agreement by an ailing Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin that divided the world between the free and unfree.
PK Semler in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv in Ukraine. For more information, email pks@capitolintelgroup.com
Copyright of Capitol Intelligence Group – Turning Swords into Equity®