Antinuclear

UPDATE – The Zaporozhiya Nuclear Plant: Zelenskiy’s Next Simulacra?

Russian and Eurasian Politics, by GORDONHAHNJuly 22, 2023

To update my original article “The Zaporozhiya Nuclear Power Plant: Zelenskiy’s Next Simulacara” it is worth noting the following points:

(1) There has been no incident, obviously, at the plant either of Russian origin, as Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskiy claimed was being planned, or of Ukrainian origin, as I argued was possible and the Russians claimed was almost certain in response to the Ukrainian claims. However, there was, as I suspected, clearly another Ukrainian fake, another Zelenskiy simulacra, since there was not ‘Russian nuclear terrorist attack and since the IAEA came out and refuted the Ukrainians’ claims that the Russians had planted explosives at the Zaporozhiya plant.

Second, it appears that this particular Zelenskiy simulacra was an effort to push the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive out of the headlines on the eve of NATO’s Vilnius summit. It may be that, as some sources report, that European leaders intervened to prevent the Ukrainians from following through on their supposedly planned false flag.

Third, it is astonishing how the Western media and Wstern governments, which was heavy breathing in its hard work of repeating the Kiev Maidan regime’s talking point about the ‘imminent Russian nuclear terrorism, has shoved the entire episode of Zelenskiy’s ‘Russian nuclear terrorist attack’ into the bottomless ‘memory whole’ that serves this war. 

 This follows the same pattern of moving on quickly after the numerous controversial and false claims that have come out of Kiev both before and during the war. Regarding the latter, there s already a long list: the Kakhovskii damn attack, the Nord Stream pipeline attack, the ‘Russian massacre’ at Bucha (where is the list of names of those killed and the detailed forensics reports on how and when precisely they died?), the hero Ukrainian pilot ‘The Ghost’ who never existed, the heroic defense of Snake Island that never occurred, the bombing of the Mariupol maternity hospital, among others.

This is part of a larger Western pattern of memory-wholing………………………………………….. The point is not that the West and Ukraine always lie or that lie more than Moscow, which it seems they do, however. The point is that Zelenskiy and his government comprise a serial fake artist, the West is their microphone, and Russia has work to do to compete with its opponents in the sphere of ‘public diplomacy.’

The original article reads as follows:

It appears almost certain that Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy and his generals, rather than Russian President Vladimir Putin and his, are considering and preparing a false flag nuclear provocation at the Zaporozhiya nuclear power plant (ZNPP) set for July 7-9 to frame NATO summit and perhaps also to provide political cover for a Polish-Baltic republic move of forces into western Ukraine. Such a nuclear event will not be on a scale even approaching the Chernobyl accident, but it will be sufficient so that it can be framed as grave ‘Russian crime against humanity’ and used by Kiev to gain certain advantages via the West,

The incident likely will occur as a result of a Ukrainian attempt to seize the Zaporozhiya NPP in response to which Russian troops will be accused of detonating explosives creating a dirty bomb effect on a small scale. Ukrainian troops will cross the dried-up Dnepr, seize the ZNPP, detonate explosives there themselves. This will allow Kiev and the West to accuse Moscow of ‘nuclear terrorism’.

The signs of an impending false flag operation have been flashing for weeks, with numerous Ukrainian commentaries to the effect that the Russians were planning a nuclear terrorist operation at the Energodar ZNPP. 

. The most recent make things pretty clear. IAEA inspections have never endorsed Ukrainian claims – ongoing for over a year now – that it is Russian forces that fire on the ZNPP. Indeed, Russian forces have occupied all of Energodar and the ZNPP and have for well over a year, and IAEA has a team permanently stationed at the plant along with Russian RosAtom personnel, who now run the plant.

More recently, on June 23rd Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate chief Kyrylo Budanov reported that Russia had completed preparations for carrying out a nuclear terrorist attack at the ZPNN

(https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1673143608315367425?s=20).

On June 29-30, Ukraine held nuclear accident civilian defense exercises in Zaporozhiya and the neighboring region of Kherson simulating the effects of an attack on the Zaporizhiya plant………………………………………………………… IAEA inspector recently refuted Zelenskiy’s claims that Russia had moved explosives into the plant in preparation for its terrorist attack, noting “found “no visible indications of mines or other explosives” at the Zaporizhiya plant (www.newsweek.com/russia-could-blow-nuclear-plant-after-handing-it-ukraine-zelensky-1810318). ………………………………………………………………., the pro-Ukrainian Institute for the Study of War concluded it is unlikely that Russia would undertake such a nuclear gambit, casting doubt on Kiev’s propaganda campaign. 

It must be kept firmly in mind that Ukraine is desperate. Desperate men do desperate things. Kiev badly needs additional arms supplies from the West, and it was hoped significant gains of territory in the first month of Kiev’s counteroffensive would be sufficient to market Ukraine’s military as worthy of greater support to the July 11 NATO summit, as Zelenskiy himself has acknowledged (https://t.me/rezident_ua/18566). But such success has not materialized and could not have.

Russian forces have overpowering advantages in air, artillery, drone, heavy ground equipment (tanks, APCs) and are attritting Western supplied Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles rapidly. Ukrainian forces are now increasingly implementing their counteroffensive without air cover, tanks, and artillery, suffering massive casualties for minimal gains in territory, which are most often quickly lost again. In a recent Washington Post interview Zalyuzhniy recently berated the West for its unrealistic expectations regarding the counteroffensive, particularly in light of Western failure to supply Kiev with F-16s and sufficient numbers of tanks, APCs, artillery, and ammunition……………………………………………………………………….. more https://gordonhahn.com/2023/07/22/update-the-zaporozhiya-nuclear-plant-zelenskiys-next-simulacra/

July 26, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets and lies