Sundays almost always seem to be filled with news stories that are better off being left till Monday unless there is no speculation at all involved in the article(s)’ facts and information. This article leaves more questions than answers, but bears following up on as soon as possible in an effort to discover what comes next. How the ‘leak’ occurred and from where and whether the stolen documents contained nuclear attack information is, of course, seriously important. I’m sure we will learn more in tomorrow’s LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS . . . ~llaw
Leaked documents show US intelligence on Israel’s plans to attack Iran, sources say
The US is investigating a leak of highly classified US intelligence about Israel’s plans for retaliation against Iran, according to three people familiar with the matter. One of the people familiar confirmed the documents’ authenticity.
The leak is “deeply concerning,” a US official told CNN.
The documents, dated October 15 and 16, began circulating online Friday after being posted on Telegram by an account called “Middle East Spectator.”
They are marked top secret and have markings indicating they are meant to be seen only by the US and its “Five Eyes” allies — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
They describe preparations Israel appears to be making for a strike against Iran. One of the documents, which says it was compiled by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says the plans involve Israel moving munitions around.
Another document says it is sourced to the National Security Agency and outlines Israeli air force exercises involving air-to-surface missiles, also believed to be in preparation for a strike on Iran. CNN is not quoting directly from or showing the documents.
A US official said the investigation is examining who had access to the alleged Pentagon document. Any such leak would automatically trigger an investigation by the FBI alongside the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies. The FBI declined to comment.
The leak comes at an extremely sensitive moment in US-Israeli relations and is bound to anger the Israelis, who have been preparing to strike Iran in response to Iran’s missile barrage on October 1. One of the documents also suggests something that Israel has always declined to confirm publicly: that the country has nuclear weapons. The document says the US has not seen any indications that Israel plans to use a nuclear weapon against Iran.
“If it is true that Israeli tactical plans to respond to Iran’s attack on October 1 have been leaked, it is a serious breach,” said Mick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East and a retired CIA officer.
Mulroy added that “the future coordination between the US and Israel could be challenged as well. Trust is a key component in the relationship, and depending on how this was leaked that trust could be eroded.”
The National Security Council referred CNN to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Pentagon for comment. The Pentagon and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency declined to comment. CNN has reached out to the National Security Agency for comment.
Another US official said that “these two documents are bad, but not horrible. The concern is if there are more.”
It is not clear how the documents became public, nor whether they were hacked or deliberately leaked. The US is already on high alert about Iranian hacking campaigns — US intelligence agencies said in August that Iran had hacked documents belonging to Donald Trump’s campaign.
Axios first reported on the leaked documents Saturday.
A major leak of US intelligence last year also strained the US’ relationships with allies and partners, including South Korea and Ukraine, after a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman posted highly classified information on the social media platform Discord.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Evan Perez and Katie Bo Lillis contributed to this report.
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A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
“The winner of November’s presidential election will confront a challenge with no immediate cure-all: America’s nuclear weapons are aging faster than they can be replaced. Moreover, this dilemma is compounded by the dual shocks of China’s breathtaking nuclear buildup and Russia’s geopolitical reversion into an acute threat—to say nothing of a North Korea that is improving its own arsenal and an Iran that is, arguably, a de facto nuclear power.” ( text from the AEI article by Kyle Balzer attached)
The following article uses “deterrence” as the one and only possibility to avoid future threats of a coming nuclear war, and, true enough, that seems to be the only option that the nuclear-armed countries and all the rest of us, too, have left to hopefully live another day.
Even the New START Treaty between Russia and the U.S., signed in 2010, has already been violated (see the article), so ‘deterrence’ seems to be the only option left, and according to the article the United States has a long and expensive way to go to improve its status in the temporary world of ‘deterrence’, which amounts to creating mutual fear among nuclear nations of each others’ stockpile of nuclear weapons.
As I have mentioned time and time again in this blog, ‘deterrence’ cannot continue indefinitely because of unsustainable financial and mutual ‘trust’ necessities, creating nothing more than a temporary patch to avoid inevitable nuclear war — from which there will be no winner . . . ~llaw
The winner of November’s presidential election will confront a challenge with no immediate cure-all: America’s nuclear weapons are aging faster than they can be replaced. Moreover, this dilemma is compounded by the dual shocks of China’s breathtaking nuclear buildup and Russia’s geopolitical reversion into an acute threat—to say nothing of a North Korea that is improving its own arsenal and an Iran that is, arguably, a de facto nuclear power.
Put simply, the US strategic nuclear posture has very little, if any, slack to offset a growing range of threats before next-generation weapons systems begin replacing older platforms. Immediately upon taking office, then, the next president should consider stop-gap measures to mitigate the long-term structural problems afflicting America’s nuclear program.
All three legs of the nuclear triad are under strain. Land-based Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles are nearly 60 years old—and their scheduled replacement, the Sentinel, has incurred significant cost overruns and might not enter service until the late 2030s. Sea-based Ohio-class submarines are nearly forty years old and will begin to reach the end of their service life in 2027 before the first next-generation Columbia-class boat is delivered. And the air-based leg, featuring B-2 and B-52 strategic bombers, is heavily taxed due to operating costs, forcereductions, and the decision to dramaticallyscaleback the nuclear air-launched cruise missile inventory.
Therefore, the US triad desperately needs more capability in the short term to offset geopolitical threats that the aging and delayed program of record was not sized and shaped to address. Fortunately, the next president has two, albeit imperfect, off-the-shelf options that could help mitigate present burdens.
First, the United States could upload more warheads on either the land- or sea-based legs. The 400 operational Minuteman silos, for example, are currently loaded only with single-warhead missiles. If loaded with all available warheads, however, the Minuteman fleet can reportedly carry some 800—if not more. As for the sea-based leg, the US Navy normally operates 12 Ohio-class submarines, armed with 20 Trident D5 ballistic missiles, which carry approximately 960 warheads (four to five warheads per Trident). If fully uploaded with eight warheads per missile, the force expands substantially.
However, this option does not come without political, material, and operational costs. Politically, the US upload capacity is limited by the New START Treaty signed with Russia in 2010. Each signatory is confined to 1,550 strategic warheads spread across their respective nuclear triad until 2026 (the United States already deploys some 1,400 strategic warheads). Given that Russia is currentlyin violation of New START, however, and in light of Russia’s barbaric war in Ukraine and its unceasing nuclear threats against NATO, the next president has cause to exit the agreement.
Nonetheless, though additional warheads are readily available in the reserve stockpile, this upload option also comes with material costs that cannot be ignored—most notably in straining submarine maintenance schedules. And operationally, loading additional warheads on Trident would impact its range and targeting flexibility.
The second off-the-shelf option entails modifying Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs), an existing conventional sea-launched cruise missile, with W80 non-strategic warheads from the reserve stockpile. In the near term, this would return a regional nuclear option—free from New START central limits—to the sea-based fleet, filling a gap that emerged following the retirement of the nuclear-tipped Tomahawk (TLAM-N) in 2013. Since the next-generation nuclear sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) won’t arrive until the mid-2030s, this would help address the massive Chinese and Russian theater-range arsenals in the short term.
In the Asia-Pacific, for example, TLAM-N’s retirement left the United States without a forward-deployed nuclear option to offset China’s growing regional capabilities. And in Europe, Russia’s arsenal of some 2,000 theater nuclear weapons dwarfs the hundred or so gravity bombs the United States forward deploys on the Continent.
However, much like the upload option, modifying TLAM comes with its own set of costs. The US Navy would have to pull some missile launchers away from conventional missions. And resources and time would have to be devoted to certifying personnel for the nuclear mission.
Still, the attack submarine fleet would not have to devote large numbers of launchers to nuclear missions: the United States simply needs to convince its adversaries that a regional strike option is on station and ready to respond. Refurbishing the TLAM-N, then, might be more appealing than uploading Minuteman and Trident, given that cruise missiles evade New START restrictions and American adversaries are growing theater nuclear forces.
The above options are not perfect—indeed, far from it. Nonetheless, their costs are relatively modest when placed in a broader perspective: The nuclear arsenal is the backbone of America’s global military posture, which has deterred great-power war since 1945.
As former Secretary of Defense James Mattis once quipped, “America can afford survival.”
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… all have developed and detonated a nuclear device. Advertisement. So how close are we to a Ukrainian nuke? The official answer we already have from …
When they’re not inventing sentient chatbots, tech giants have a new obsession: nuclear power. … The new kind of nuclear plants built by Kairos and X- …
Putin also declared the revised document envisages possible nuclear weapons use in case of a massive air attack, holding the door open to a potential …
Given that Russia is currently in violation of New START, however, and in light of Russia’s barbaric war in Ukraine and its unceasing nuclear threats …
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AI will eventually build its own computers/robots because it will grow beyond human intelligence capability and capacity ~llaw (stock photo)
“You Tube” has managed to seize the entire “All Things Nuclear” (Category 1) this Friday, so take your personal preference(s) about their temporary ‘monopoly’ on this unusual Friday for nuclear news. Also, the Friday AIEA has provided several interesting stories this week that should be of interest to us all.
My major concern regarding today’s nuclear news is our apparently ‘blind’ belief that spreading SMRs (Small Nuclear Reactors) on every street corner in or near cities around the world to support AI and other demand for electricity will add to the doomsday speculation that is growing more aggressive every day. Nuclear power plants of every kind, big and small, are extremely dangerous for lots of reasons, including not only disastrous nuclear accidents, but also nuclear war (as we are are already seeing in the Russia/Ukraine war), nuclear sabotage, nuclear terrorism, and disposal of nuclear waste that is already out of control with neglect, especially in the United States. And, of course, the more there are, the greater the nuclear risks . . .
We are rapidly seeing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) being shoved aside by our governments and out-of-control corporate demands for creating what is even today uncontrollable, powerful, and dangerous Artificial Intelligence (AI). We will, of course, move forward with the very simple idea that computers can handle almost all of our human intelligence (and some manufacturing) activities, including military and corporate management and product assembly and operation that could easily gain control over all human activity, enslaving us to live under AI demands without human consent or participation. Or, it could just do away with us altogether.
Our blind lemming-like death-wish continues to move forward without any existing form of controlling something that can and will control itself at the ultimate human expense — our very existence — if nuclear war doesn’t end it all first. ~llaw
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Chips and energy are the picks and shovels of the AI movement, making reexamining nuclear power a logical conclusion. But if investors want to follow …
Comments22 · ‘Nuclear Weapons Or NATO…’: Zelensky’s New Demand Stuns West As Putin’s War ‘Frustrates’ Ukraine · Technical Officers Or Fighters? · Angry …
The 2024 edition of the IAEA’s Climate Change and Nuclear Power report has been released, highlighting the need for a significant increase in investment to achieve goals for expanding nuclear power. Read more →
More than 1000 participants from nearly 100 countries are set to attend the first IAEA International Conference on Small Modular Reactors and their Applications, from 21 to 25 October at the Agency’s headquarters in Vienna. Read more →
Speaking on World Food Day at the opening session of the FAO Science and Innovation Forum in Rome, Rafael Mariano Grossi, IAEA Director General, marked the day with Qu Dongyu, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization. The Director General highlighted the IAEA and FAO’s long-standing partnership and the importance of their joint Atoms4Food initiative. Read more →
The IAEA works with scientists all over the world to study Blue Carbon, the organic carbon that is captured and stored by the ocean in vegetated coastal ecosystems such as mangrove forests, saltmarshes or seagrass meadows. Read more →
This from other points of worldview that clarify complicated and important issues concerning the tangled web of global war growing out of the Russian/Ukraine war as it applies to the USA, NATO, as well as as the connected concern over the Middle East situation and a possible Israel/Iran war.
As an example of a global view, this quote from French columnist for Le Monde, Sylvie Kaufman, speculated on the possibility of a Trump victory in next month’s U.S. presidential elections leading to a slowdown of US military aid to Ukraine and ultimately a Russian victory. “There are three weeks to get ready for the worst possible outcomes,” she wrote. “The defeat of Ukraine would also be the defeat of Europe. We must now imagine the consequences a Russian victory would have in Europe,”
I urge you to read this article. The speculation is well considered and documented, although it is doubtful that the final two paragraphs will ever come to be . . . ~llaw
Conspiracy of silence shrouds Biden’s Ukraine summit in Berlin as NATO holds nuclear exercises
Outgoing US President Joseph Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron are to meet tomorrow in Berlin for an emergency summit on the Ukraine war. To date, state officials and media in countries whose leaders are attending the Berlin summit have given no concrete information on what the summit agenda will be.
President Joe Biden listens as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 3, 2023. [AP Photo/Susan Walsh]
The four leading NATO imperialist powers are however clearly meeting to discuss plans for an international military escalation. It comes only a few days after the Pentagon publicly deployed US troops to Israel amid the genocide in Gaza, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and calls for US-Israeli bombing of Iran. Moreover, Biden was originally slated to travel to Germany to discuss a monumentally reckless plan for mass long-range bombings of Russia.
This trip to Europe, Biden’s last as US president, was previously scheduled to be a NATO summit at the Ramstein airbase, to discuss authorizing Ukraine to launch strikes with long-range US, German, British and French missiles deep into Russia. However, the Ramstein summit was suddenly cancelled last week and replaced with the four-power summit in Berlin, disinviting the other NATO member states.
The deafening silence on the agenda of the Berlin summit amounts to a conspiracy by the major NATO powers to hide both the disaster they have caused in Ukraine and the Middle East and their planning for an even more catastrophic military escalation.
While Biden ostensibly cancelled the Ramstein summit to stay in the United States during the emergency response to Hurricane Milton, this came shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin changed Russia’s nuclear doctrine in response to threats of NATO missile strikes. The Kremlin announced that it could use nuclear weapons in response to strikes on Russia carried out by a non-nuclear power with the assistance of nuclear powers.
Further underscoring the nuclear war threat, NATO is now holding two weeks of nuclear war exercises, codenamed Steadfast Noon, set to end on October 28. This involves 60 nuclear-capable aircraft practicing strike maneuvers over Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Britain and the North Sea. About Steadfast Noon, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters: “In an uncertain world, it is vital that we test our defense and that we strengthen our defense so that our adversaries know that NATO is ready and is able to respond to any threat.”
NATO is also holding the two-week “Exercise Strike Warrior” naval war games in waters northeast of Britain, with a 20-ship task force led by UK aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales.
Yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presented a reckless, five-point “victory plan” to the parliament in Kiev, supposedly to ensure Russia’s defeat. His plan called for Ukraine to join NATO, use NATO countries’ weapons for strikes on Russia at will, and develop a “non-nuclear deterrence package” whose content he did not specify.
For the fourth point, Zelensky boasted of Ukraine’s “natural resources, including critical minerals worth trillions of dollars.” He cryptically pledged to provide a “return on investment” to the United States and other NATO powers, apparently by handing over these resources to them, which he said was spelled out in “a secret annex, which is shared only with certain partners.” In short, Zelensky, while claiming to be fighting for Ukrainian freedom from Russia, is in fact selling off its resources to the NATO powers’ major corporations.
Finally, he called to integrate Ukrainian troops into NATO armies after the war. Zelensky claimed this would force Russia to “join an honest diplomatic process to bring the war to a just end.”
The coverage of Zelensky’s proposals in international media has been staggeringly superficial. It is a matter of record that in recent months, NATO heads of state have also advanced the proposals Zelensky made yesterday. While they are clearly part of an ongoing discussion of policy in the ruling elites of the NATO countries, the media and political establishment are asking none of the obvious questions that flow from Zelensky’s remarks.
What estimates are Biden, Scholz, Starmer and Macron seeing on how many millions would die if NATO’s use of Ukraine as a launchpad to bomb Russia triggers nuclear war? If Ukraine joined NATO, how soon do they believe the NATO and Russian militaries would be fighting each other? And how does Zelensky intend on this basis to reach peace, since the Kremlin went to war precisely to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and letting NATO station troops on Russia’s borders?
At the same time, Zelensky’s “victory plan” clearly faces major obstacles, starting with the fact that none of the major NATO imperialist powers have yet agreed, at least publicly, to admit Ukraine into NATO now, or to let Ukraine use their missiles for long-range strikes on Russia.
Moreover, there is mounting popular opposition to Zelensky, who has suspended elections and rules as a dictator. Yesterday, Hromadske television reported that thousands of people marched in Kiev to protest Zelensky, demanding to know the whereabout of their relatives, in one of the largest anti-war protests in Kiev to date. Many of the protesters were reportedly relatives of Ukrainian soldiers who made an ill-fated attempt to invade Russia and are now trapped near Kursk, pinned down by artillery.
At the same time, a report attributed to US intelligence sources circulated widely on Telegram yesterday claiming to show that Ukraine has suffered a staggering 1.8 million losses in the war, including over 700,000 killed in action. Since Zelensky’s regime does not regularly update the number killed in the war, it is impossible to precisely evaluate this number. However, it is plausible. More than a year ago, US military pundits like Douglas MacGregor were already citing Pentagon briefings to claim that Ukraine had suffered over 300,000 deaths.
Ukraine has been bled white in a war that is lost, unless there is a massive intervention by US-NATO troops in Ukraine for an open war with Russia that directly poses the risk of escalation to nuclear war.
There is mounting crisis and panic in European ruling circles over Ukraine. Last week, former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg argued that Ukraine should negotiate a peace with Russia—which the NATO powers themselves forced Ukraine to reject after Russian and Ukrainian negotiators agreed on a peace deal shortly after the war began. Then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson pressed Zelensky to reject the deal, which might have saved hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have since died in the war.
In her regular column yesterday for the French daily Le Monde, Sylvie Kaufmann speculated on the possibility of a Trump victory in next month’s US presidential elections leading to a slowdown of US military aid to Ukraine and ultimately a Russian victory. “There are three weeks to get ready for the worst possible outcomes,” she wrote.
“The defeat of Ukraine would also be the defeat of Europe. We must now imagine the consequences a Russian victory would have in Europe,” Kaufmann continued. She said that in such a scenario, “the Europeans will not be able to compensate for the loss of American aid. The Ukrainian army would have more and more difficulty resisting Russian offensives.” She speculated that certain Balkan countries could abandon plans to join the European Union. She also worried that the EU itself might split apart if Italy, Hungary or other EU member states abandoned the Ukraine war.
Despite growing talk of defeat and negotiations in ruling circles, the major imperialist powers are firmly set on a policy of escalation. With Russian troops already stationed in Syria and Iran, a planned US-NATO military escalation coordinated with Israel against Iran or other Middle Eastern countries could also very rapidly lead to a direct military confrontation with Russia. Indeed, both Ukraine and the Middle East are fronts in a global conflict NATO is waging against Russia and China.
The decisive question is mobilizing the mass opposition that exists in the working class to NATO plans for escalation in Ukraine and to the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza. According to a Eurasia Group poll earlier this year, 91 percent of Americans and 89 percent of West Europeans oppose plans for military escalation against Russia. This anger will only grow as it becomes obvious that the United States and Europe have both wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on a dirty war that is lost, financing this spending with attacks on social spending and real wages.
An international anti-war movement must be built in the working class, at workplaces and in schools, to call a halt to the war and take power out of the hands of the corrupt and monumentally reckless ruling elites that have led it, on a perspective of a struggle for socialism.
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A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
What to Read Next ; Amazon Continues Push to Add More Nuclear Energy With 2 New Deals. 13 hours ago ; Opinion: One Thing We All Agree On. 15 hours ago.
It is hard to determine the serious immanent danger aspects mentioned in this article from the British “Daily Express” because there hasn’t been a lot of other coverage concerning the previous Ukraine attack on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in Russia. What I have read is primarily about Russia’s outrage denouncing Ukraine for their bold retaliation crossing the border into Russia and attacking the Kursk nuclear plant as a response to Russia’s continued attacks on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. But there is no doubt that the overall situation, including threats to the other two Ukraine power plants possibly under siege by Russia, and the surprise attack by Ukraine on the Kursk plant has raised the implications of this ongoing war to an apparent far greater international level.
The difference of the immanent radiation danger of both countries’ nuclear power plants becoming active WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) at this stage of the “nuclear power plant wars” is that Zaporizhzhia has been shut down due to the previous Russian attacks, but the Kursk plant is so far still operational, which increases the danger of a possible meltdown . . . Stay tuned. ~llaw
At the beginning of October, Ukrainian drones were shot down just three miles from the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), sparking widespread panic.
11:39, Wed, Oct 16, 2024 | UPDATED: 11:43, Wed, Oct 16, 2024
Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (Image: Google maps Bojidar 93)
Russia faces the prospect of a catastrophic nuclear disaster due to the proximity of one of its atomic power plants to the frontlines.
At the beginning of October, Ukrainian drones were shot down just three miles from the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), sparking widespread panic.
The plant is located a mere 18 miles from the frontline, near the city of Kurchatov and has come in closer range of Ukrainian missiles and drones, following Kyiv’s daring incursion into the Kursk region at the beginning of August.
Ukraine‘s Security and Defence Council representative Andriy Kovalenko denied any attempt by Kyiv’s forces to strike the plant at the time, calling such a move “pointless”.
Operators at the Kursk Nuclear Power Station (Image: Bojidar 93 Google Maps)
However, the fact remains the KNPP remains vulnerable to a military strike – whether intentional or not – and was never designed to withstand such an attack.
Unlike Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia NPP, the Kursk plant is still operational and therefore the consequences of a direct hit on it could be devastating.
Alexander Nikitin, a nuclear advisor at the environmental Bellona Foundation, told the Russian investigative outlet Verstka that the plant’s design never accounted for the possibility of a military attack.
He called the current situation “an unprecedented emergency”, echoing warnings made by Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
A source from Russia‘s state nuclear agency Rosatom pointed out that the Kursk plant was built during the time of the Soviet Union and much of its technology and materials were old.
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There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
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The threat of a nuclear confrontation, which a decade ago seemed fanciful, is no longer unimaginable. Advertisement. Russian President Vladimir Putin …
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that North Korea is sending military personnel to help Russia’s war effort, without providing details …
Although the magical word ‘deterrence’ is not used, this ‘must read’ article, from “Truthout”, helps to explain what nuclear “deterrence” is doing to the economy of the United States and other nuclear armed nations, which will also continue to ‘rub off’ on economically smaller non-nuclear countries. This story and my comments relate to and expands on my “All Things Nuclear” blog post from yesterday.
All we need to know and understand is that as long as nuclear ‘deterrence’ is the only way to defend ourselves from our fear of nuclear war, our economic stability around the world will only get worse, and of course the lower and middle classes of all nations’ citizens will be the first to continue to suffer to a growing greater degree until poverty, rather than war may take its ultimate toll on humanity, although nuclear war is, of course, far and away the most likely.
Obviously, we cannot have it both ways, and so the simple saving grace, if we are human enough, is to “lay down our arms”, unify around the world, and remove, now and forever, all things nuclear from our way of international life. ~llaw
Costly Replacement of ICBMs With Sentinel Missiles Increases Risk of Nuclear War
Many of our unmet needs as US citizens are due in part to the cost of the US nuclear arsenal.
Brig. Gen. William Rogers, director of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Systems Directorate and Air Force program executive officer for ICBMs, speaks during a leadership ceremony at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, on August 27, 2024.
R. Nial Bradshaw / U.S. Air Force
At the September 10 presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris described her support for maintaining the “most lethal fighting force” in the world. Almost certainly that includes the United States’ plan to upgrade its nuclear arsenal with more powerful, more accurate nuclear warhead delivery systems, as well as new tactical nuclear warheads and bombs for use on the battlefield.
The world is already awash in nuclear weapons with an astonishing capacity for mass death: The U.S. has 14 Ohio-class nuclear-armed submarines. A single submarine can launch 24 missiles. Each missile can carry eight independently targeted warheads with blast forces many times greater than the Hiroshima bomb — 100,000 tons of TNT equivalent versus 15,000 tons. The missiles launched from just one such submarine can obliterate the major cities of any nation on Earth. The U.S. also maintains 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in fixed silos and hundreds of strategic nuclear bombs mounted on B-52 and B-2 bombers.
The U.S., North Korea, France, Russia and China are all upgrading their nuclear weapons arsenals, developing new nuclear weapons, or deploying them more closely to current target areas. Israeli leaders have threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran, a risk which has intensified since the former’s escalation against Lebanon. Russia has threatened to use nukes if Ukraine moved to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or if the U.S. assists Ukraine in firing conventional missiles deep into Russia. The U.S. has never disavowed first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Russian scholar Gilbert Doctorow worries that the U.S. may launch a first nuclear strike against Russia to prevent its total victory in Ukraine. Former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, one of several members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, fears the U.S. may use tactical nukes in Ukraine to forestall total Russian victory in that war. Trump’s advisers are calling for renewing nuclear weapons testing, in violation of the multilateral Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
The first steps in this unsound direction were taken by the U.S. under President Barack Obama, when design and production of this new generation of nukes began. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden continued with Obama’s plan, increasing its annual funding.
The 2023, U.S. military budget voted by Congress, included $51.5 billion for nuclear weapons, an 18 percent increase over the previous year and more than all of the other nuclear-armed nations combined. The budget continues funds for upgrading all three legs of the U.S. nuclear weapons triad — ICBMs in fixed silos, nuclear-armed submarines and long-range strategic bombers — with new nuclear missiles. This is happening as the U.S. — the world’s most powerful nuclear-armed nation — has withdrawn from major nuclear disarmament treaties representing decades of successful diplomacy.
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Nuclear Power · Nuclear Propulsion · Nuclear Policy · Nuclear History · Nuclear … Emergency THAAD Deployment To Israel Heightens Concerns On Strain To …
US Carrier Strike Group Pivots to NATO Waters Amid Russia Threat · US To Expand NATO Air Base To Hold Nuclear-Capable Fighter Jets · Video Shows F-16 ‘ …
This “last minute” message from, Scott D. Sagan, a Political Scientist at Stanford University, who writes about nuclear issues reminds us of how Donald Trump helped free Iran from restricted use of nuclear power. That agreement, created by President Obama, prevented Iran from creating nuclear weapons by restricting Tehran’s ability to make highly enriched uranium bomb material mentioned in the article below, which Trump unilaterally canceled in 2018.
Such a totally irresponsible action alone should prevent Trump from ever setting foot in the White House again, but his views on nuclear weapons and nuclear warfare go even further, considering his ridiculous belief that he can control (through “friendship”) Russia’s Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong un, and China’s Xi Jinping. Obviously, he has no rational understanding of nuclear conflict and that none of these well-armed nuclear-threat countries are our allies, but rather exactly the opposite. ~llaw
Opinion: I study nuclear war. Kamala Harris must be our next president.
Scott D. Sagan
Op-ed contributor
The risk of nuclear war in the Middle East today is dangerously high, and Donald Trump is responsible.
Let me explain.
I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. I clearly remember the “duck and cover” exercises we conducted in elementary school, crawling under the wooden desks when an alarm bell rang out at the Greenfield Village School. Our teacher tried to calm our nerves by claiming this was “a hurricane drill.” But with Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis on the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite, we all knew what the drills were really about.
And I recall how scared I was again about the danger of nuclear war a few years later, as a teenager in the 1970s. On Oct. 6, 1973, Israel was attacked by Egyptian and Syrian forces in a surprise attack in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The Israeli Defense Forces gradually fought back, supplied by U.S. emergency arms shipments, defeating the Syrians and crossing the Suez Canal to surround the Egyptian Third Army in the Sinai desert. Then, on Oct. 24, 1973, the Soviet Union threatened to send troops to Egypt to enter the war, on the side of its Egyptian allies.
Suddenly, President Richard Nixon put U.S. nuclear forces on a high-level DEFCON 3 alert to try to deter the Soviet Union from sending forces to the Middle East. Threatening nuclear war was not prudent (I thought that even in my teenage years), but simultaneously, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger successfully put pressure on Israel to accept a cease-fire and end the 1973 war. This cease-fire eventually led to the Camp David Accords and the peace between Israel and Egypt that still exists today.
We also now know that Nixon, facing Watergate soon thereafter, was so distraught and irrational in his decision-making that Secretary of Defense James Schlessinger actually warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to automatically follow military orders from the president, but rather to check with him first. Schlessinger’s actions were not constitutional, but were prudent and wise.
This dark history is relevant today. For I have never been worried about a nuclear war in the Middle East since then … until now.
No deal
A war is raging in the Middle East, and Iran is on the brink of getting nuclear weapons. Donald Trump is responsible for this dangerous development because his administration withdrew, in 2018, from the U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal that restricted Tehran’s ability to make highly enriched uranium bomb material.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors in Iran verified that Tehran was in compliance, but then-President Donald Trump claimed that he, the self-proclaimed “master of the deal,” would get a better agreement.
He did not.
Iran was a year or two away from getting the bomb when the Obama Administration negotiated the Iran nuclear agreement, and when Trump cancelled it. Now, U.S. intelligence agencies report that Iran “has greatly expanded its nuclear program” and “has the infrastructure and experience to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium.” The head of the IAEA now estimates that Iran has “amassed enough nuclear material for several weapons, not just one.” That is the direct result of Trump’s ego and poor decision-making.
In the coming weeks or months, Israel may well attack the Iranian nuclear facilities in response to Iran’s recent missile and drone attack on Israel. But Israel lacks the confidence that it could destroy all of the Iranian nuclear materials, both because the enrichment centrifuges are in deep underground facilities — and because most of the IAEA inspectors were kicked out of Iran due to Trump’s rash withdrawal from the nuclear deal. This means Israel can’t be sure that it knows where all Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities are now located. And even if an attack is successful in the short-term, Iran will likely then rush to rebuild a nuclear arsenal.
High stakes
When you get to the polls, think about that scenario.
Do you want a President Kamala Harris who supports Israel, but has expressed doubts about the way Israel is fighting its wars today?
Or do you want a President Trump, who criticized calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “knows what he’s doing” and advised him “have victory, get your victory, and get it over with.”
Do you want a President Harris, a former prosecutor known to stay calm and focused under pressure?
Or do you want a President Trump, who was so impulsive and vengeful at the end of his term in office that his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, like Nixon’s secretary of defense, told senior military officers to check back with him before following any presidential orders to use military force?
The voters of Michigan may well decide who is the next president of the United States. They should remember that the risk of nuclear war is on the ballot in November.
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Like the one about the COVID test machine then President Donald Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin in the early days of the pandemic. Or the …
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently stated, “The nuclear threat is not confined to history books,” and “nuclear weapons remain a clear and …
Missiles are launched during a simulated nuclear counterattack drill at an undisclosed location in North Korea on April 22. (See Article for Photo Credits)
I have no idea who the “experts” are, or if they even exist, when it comes to nuclear forbearance, nuclear proliferation, and other questionable activities dealing with subjective nuclear concerns. But, of course, this one of nuclear “deterrence” is the one that may be the most important and dangerous of all because the very concept is based on fear of each other.
Deterrence is the only factor that prevents nuclear war, most all other country-to-country agreements and pledges having become broken or gone by the wayside, and deterrence is merely a temporary fragile thread that cannot, for many reasons, survive forever among the nations that have nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) because to continue on is unaffordable both financially and cooperatively trustworthy over time, and time is of the essence where nuclear war and all other things nuclear is concerned. Someone will push the nuclear button in due time and that one single action by a single world leader will end the world as we know it.
The coming inevitable Doomsday is inevitable barring a sudden cooperative change of heart by all nuclear armed countries (which will never happen), or by an unknown force of some kind that has not yet revealed its influence over humanity. ~llaw
Nuclear deterrence still at heart of great power strategy, experts say
AFP, PARIS
Nuclear-armed powers have no intention of giving up the atom bomb as part of their military strategy, experts said after the Nobel Peace Prize committee urged against any weakening of the nuclear “taboo.”
Awarding this year’s peace prize to Japan’s Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors pushing for a nuclear weapons ban, the committee on Friday said the atom bomb attacks on both Japanese cities in 1945 had led to a “nuclear taboo” which had, however, come under “pressure” since.
While none of the countries possessing nuclear weapons have used them in war since 1945, the implicit or even explicit threat to do so is part of their arsenal.
Missiles are launched during a simulated nuclear counterattack drill at an undisclosed location in North Korea on April 22.
Photo: The North Korean Central News Agency via EPA-EFE
Moscow has repeatedly brandished the nuclear threat in a bid to dissuade the West from supporting Ukraine, which has been fending off Russia’s invasion since February 2022.
Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center director Alexander Gabuev said it was “no coincidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin made a nuclear threat on the eve of a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy about Kyiv’s possible use of missiles capable of striking Russian territory.
The Nobel committee wanted to send “a strong signal” to Russia, said Bruno Tertrais, political scientist at France’s Strategic Research Foundation.
Russia had “normalized,” even “trivialized,” talk of a nuclear weapons use since its invasion of Ukraine, he said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said last week his country would use nuclear weapons “without hesitation” if attacked by South Korea and its ally, the US.
In the Middle East, Israel, the region’s only nuclear-armed state, has vowed a “deadly, precise and surprising” response to Iran’s direct strike on Israeli territory on Oct. 1.
Meanwhile, Tehran has significantly ramped up its nuclear program and now has enough material to build more than three atomic bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
“The logic of deterrence is firmly entrenched in countries that have nuclear weapons,” said Tertrais, adding however that the risk of atomic bomb use “is no greater now than five years ago.”
Standard nuclear doctrine — developed during the Cold War between superpowers the US and the Soviet Union — is based on the assumption that such weapons would never have to be used, because their impact is so devastating, and because nuclear retaliation would probably bring similar destruction on the original attacker.
This is why China has never given up its “no first strike” doctrine, said Lukasz Kulesa, Director of Proliferation and Nuclear Policy at the Royal United Services Institute.
Other countries have also signaled that nuclear arms use would be a last resort while not ruling it out completely to maintain credibility in the eyes of opponents, Kulesa said.
However, keeping a safe balance between threat and restraint can never be risk-free, he said.
“There is always a possibility of failure. There is also a possibility of inadvertent escalation that can go all the way to the nuclear level,” he said.
Countries possessing nuclear weapons today are the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
Israel is also widely assumed to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons, although it has never officially acknowledged this.
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
This simple prescient and common sense statement from a survivor of the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki by the United States and the co-leader of the recently honored Nobel Prize group, Nihon Hidankyo, echoes the similar words of those who knew and understood “All Things Nuclear” since the 1940s Manhattan Project scientists who helped build and denounce the two nuclear bombs used on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that ended World War II. We should all know by now that we cannot continue on the nuclear path, including nuclear power, that we are presently on and survive . . . ~llaw
Risk of nuclear war rising amid global conflicts, Nobel peace laureate says
‘Path to self-destruction’: Survivors recall horrors of nuclear bombings as they draw parallels to ongoing wars.
Demonstrators gather for a rally in support of Palestinians in Gaza, at the preserved Atomic Bomb Dome in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, in Hiroshima, Japan, on October 12, 2024 [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters]
Published On 12 Oct 202412 Oct 2024
Conflicts raging around the world, including in Gaza, are heightening the possibility of a nuclear war, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize warned, renewing calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots group of Japanese atomic bomb survivors, won the prize on Friday for its “efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons”.
On Saturday, Shigemitsu Tanaka, a survivor of the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki by the United States and co-leader of the group, said the “international situation is getting progressively worse, and now wars are being waged as countries threaten the use of nuclear weapons”.
“I fear that we as humankind are on the path to self-destruction. The only way to stop that is to abolish nuclear,” the resident of Nagasaki told reporters.
Nagasaki was the second Japanese city that was hit by a US nuclear bomb on August 9, 1945, killing at least 74,000 people. Three days earlier, the US bombing of Hiroshima had killed 140,000 people.
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There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
With the end of the Cold War, it was decided that the airborne alert was no longer necessary. Instead, a smaller fleet of aircraft was maintained on a …
Nobel Peace Prize: Take Award as Chance to Contain Nuclear Threats … Amid an unprecedented increase in the nuclear threat posed by Russia’s aggression …
Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov served as deputy minister of foreign affairs and defense before being appointed as Moscow’s most senior diplomat in Washington in August 2017. (See AP photo credits in the article)
This article, courtesy of “Newsweek” is an up to the moment comprehensive report on the current and serious situation among Russia, Ukraine, the United States, Britain, the rest of NATO, and possibly the entire world.
The firing and timing of the Russian Ambassador by Putin seems to me to possibly be intentionally related to the U.S. presidential election, which may also be due to Donald J. Trump’s candidacy who has long been known to have a close and possibly illegal personal relationship (Logan Act violation) to Vladimir Putin, which has been suggested in Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward’s new book “War” to be released on October 15th.
There are also links to important older but related stories posted at the end of this informative and extremely harrowing current situation that could flare like an out of control forest fire into the first and last all-out nuclear war . . . ~llaw
Exclusive: Russia Ambassador Exits US With Warning of ‘Nuclear Catastrophe’
Published Oct 10, 2024 at 4:31 PM EDTUpdated Oct 11, 2024 at 12:03 AM EDT
Russia’s top envoy to the United States has ended his term, leaving behind an ominous forecast about the risk of deteriorating bilateral ties escalating into a nuclear-armed clash over the ongoing war in Ukraine in an exclusive interview with Newsweek.
The Kremlin announced on Thursday that Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov had been officially relieved of his duty after seven years of service. In the lead-up to his departure, Antonov spoke with Newsweek about the troubled state of relations between Moscow and Washington, which show no signs of improving as the war in Ukraine continues and NATO doubles down on military support for Kyiv amid recent advances by the Russian military.
‘”Project Ukraine’ is dragging American politicians only further into an abyss, from which it is increasingly difficult to get out,” Antonov told Newsweek. “As we see, the administration can only respond to the victories of Russian troops in Donbas and the failure of the provocation by the Ukrainian armed forces in the Kursk region by using the same hackneyed theses about ‘support as long as we can.'”
“There are zero signals to clients about the need to think over their position and sit down at the negotiating table,” he added. “Neither are there any hints about stopping the senseless flow of weapons at the expense of the local taxpayer.”
Instead, he argued that “Washington is continuing a dangerous discussion about the possibility of giving Ukrainians a permission to strike deep into Russian territory with Western long-range missiles.”
Such talk threatened to defy the latest ultimatum issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly warned against external intervention since first ordering a “special military operation” into Ukraine in February 2022.
“They refuse to take into account the clear warnings of the President of the Russian Federation that a ‘green light’ for such attacks would mean NATO’s direct involvement in the conflict,” Antonov said, “with all the following conclusions on our part.”
Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov at the United Nations headquarters. Antonov has left Washington after seven years of service. Sergey Guneev/Sputnik/AP
Divisions at Home and Abroad
Antonov served as deputy minister of foreign affairs and defense before being appointed as Moscow’s most senior diplomat in Washington in August 2017. He became a vocal advocate for the Kremlin’s position throughout the terms of U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who is also set to vacate his office soon as Vice President Kamala Harris gears up for a tight race against Trump next month.
Antonov said he had “no desire” to discuss the inner workings of U.S. politics today but observed that “local party strategists seem to be trying to come up with official statements for Ukraine to meet the demands of the U.S. current electoral cycle.”
“These people are not interested in the fate of Europeans and Kiev,” Antonov said. “They are only interested in the digits in public opinion polls, which supposedly can be adjusted in their favor if they demonstrate ‘determination’ and ‘leadership.’ This is pure recklessness.”
He also identified a “divided” public discourse in the U.S.
“On one hand,” Antonov said, “we see a lot of attempts by reasonable political scientists to understand the situation, find workable—at least in the eyes of the United States— options to end the conflict and develop an inter-party consensus based on a common understanding of the danger of collapsing into World War III.”
“However, any voices of reason in Washington today are silenced or written off as ‘Kremlin propaganda,” he added. “The recent unjustified sanctions against Russian journalists are in this vein, as well as provocative attacks by local intelligence services against Dmitry Simes, Scott Ritter and compatriots living in America.”
Antonov railed against what he called a “brutal ‘cleansing’ of the information space in America” via the prosecution and censorship of individuals accused of spreading Russian propaganda, sanctions and raids against state-backed Russian media outlets and other measures.
Such actions, he argued, target those “who call for a sober assessment of the risks of being dragged into a morass of the Eastern Europe conflict and the prospect of a head-on collision with a nuclear power, those who warn that sitting out overseas while others are dying, without any costs, is an illusion and self-deception.”
Newsweek reached out to the U.S. State Department and the Ukrainian Embassy to the U.S. for comment.
Washington and Kyiv have long accused Moscow of spreading disinformation via state-sponsored campaigns intended to serve the Kremlin’s interests.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has declared an unwavering position to continue military assistance to Ukraine, and many NATO allies have offered similar pledges. However, the issue has proved increasingly polarizing in Western capitals, with some, including a number of Republicans in the U.S., expressing growing skepticism about the utility of the current strategy.
The division also runs through the upcoming U.S. election. Harris vows to continue with Biden’s approach of supporting Ukraine until victory, while Trump has promised to quickly reach a deal that would put an end to what has become Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
But as these debates play out at a turbulent time for U.S. politics, Antonov accused U.S. think tanks of responding to “reasonable” publications with “poisonous commentaries about the harm of any conversation with ‘the Russians'” and said that U.S. politicians prefer “to listen to ‘hawks.'”
Rather than seeking peace, they discuss “creating hostilities between the Slavs, encouraging the killing of people, and intensifying military escalation,” he argued.
“All this only confirms that the political elites have set themselves the task not just to defeat Russia but to preserve the old world order, based on the rules favorable to NATO countries,” Antonov said. “We want to change this obviously outdated state of affairs. We want our security interests to be taken into account.”
Ukrainian personnel fire a howitzer toward Russian positions near the front line in Chasiv Yar on September 30. GENYA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images
A Flashpoint in Flames
While Russia’s large-scale war against Ukraine began in February 2022, the roots of the conflict could be traced back to seismic shifts in the global order that began decades earlier.
Since first assuming power on the eve of the 21st century, less than 10 years after the fall of the USSR, Putin has consistently argued against the growing presence of the U.S.-led NATO military alliance in the former Soviet sphere of influence. He has accused Western rivals of seeking to encircle Russia; Washington and its allies have argued that entry into NATO was voluntary and was often pursued due to the perceived threats of Russian aggression.
The geopolitical storm landed in Ukraine a decade ago, when a mass uprising supported by the U.S. in 2014 ousted the government in favor of leadership seeking closer ties with the West. Moscow condemned what it called a “coup” and sent forces to seize the Crimean Peninsula as Russia-aligned separatists rose in the eastern Donbas region.
Thus began the largest militarization on the continent since the Cold War, with NATO increasingly shoring up its position in Eastern Europe and Russia dedicating more troops and equipment to its western frontier.
As Russian troops began to amass in unprecedented numbers along Ukraine’s borders in 2021, Moscow issued two proposals for demilitarizing that would effectively see NATO reduce its presence in regions near Russia’s borders, to which Antonov said the response was “silence and smirks.”
Talks quickly unraveled, and Putin ultimately resorted to force. Both sides continue to blame one another for setting the stage for conflict.
“In America, there is an unwillingness to recognize that over the past few decades, the West, led by Washington, has been rejecting Moscow’s outstretched hand of cooperation again and again,” Antonov said. “Year after year, it has been militarily ‘exploiting’ European territory, conducting waves of NATO expansion to the East.”
“It has organized color revolutions and anti-constitutional coups,” he said, “increasingly encircling Russia in a hostile ‘ring,’ and as the ‘decisive battering ram’ it chose Ukraine.”
Antonov said that the Pentagon has gone so far as “to study the outcomes of using nuclear weapons on the agricultural sector of Eastern Europe, including Russia,” including “modeling a global nuclear war scenario that will lead to the destruction, as Americans think for some reason, of only agricultural farms.”
“Such simulations were actively conducted during the Cold War years,” Antonov said. “It is noteworthy that even the American military started to contemplate a nuclear conflict.”
“At the same time, they mistakenly believe that this catastrophe will only affect Europe and Russia,” he added. “This is extremely short-sighted. America will not be able to sit it out across the ocean. A global nuclear catastrophe would affect everyone.”
Now, Antonov said, “The objective maximum task at this stage is to prevent the ties between two great powers and permanent members of the Security Council from finally plunging into an uncontrolled nosedive.”
“Russia, as a responsible state, is not interested in such an extremely dangerous development of the situation,” he said. “We convey this idea to our interlocutors and the general public in America on a regular basis. We try to put it explicitly that an insatiable desire to achieve strategic victory on the battlefield over Russia is simply impossible.”
Russian personnel fire a rocket launcher against Ukrainian positions in Avdiivka on October 4. Evgeny Biyatov/Sputnik/AP
Rival Proposals
Several notable attempts have been made to achieve a diplomatic solution since the beginning of the conflict, including direct talks held in Belarus and Turkey in the early weeks. The discussions appeared to make the most progress in Istanbul in April 2022 but have since remained largely frozen.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for a resolution that would see Russian forces unconditionally withdraw from his country’s territory, including four provinces annexed by Moscow in an internationally disputed referendum held in September 2022, as well as from Crimea, which was annexed in a similar vote after being captured by Russia in 2014. He’s also stated that Russian officials, including Putin, must face accountability for alleged war crimes.
These core demands, which Russia outright rejected, were reportedly featured in the new “victory plan” presented by the Ukrainian leader to the White House last month. The plan was set to be unveiled this weekend at a summit in Germany, but the meeting was canceled after Biden pulled out to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.
Putin presented a new proposal of his own in June. This entailed Ukraine ceding the unilaterally Russian-annexed territories, Kyiv abandoning its desire to become a full NATO member, and other measures dismissed by Zelensky and his foreign backers.
Harris referred to the conditions of the Russian plan as “proposals for surrender, which is dangerous and unacceptable,” during a meeting last month with Zelensky.
Trump has not responded directly to the Russian proposal but has said he had his own plan that would end the war “in 24 hours.” While he has declined to offer details, his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, has revealed the plan would likely include a “demilitarized zone” along the current line of demarcation between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
On the ground, the war has only intensified. Russian forces have advanced on several key axes, while Ukrainian forces have conducted strikes further into Russia itself, including a ground incursion into Kursk province.
Echoing the position expressed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during an exclusive interview with Newsweek earlier this week, Antonov saw additional pledges of military assistance to Ukraine from the U.S. and other Western countries as a direct response to the Russian peace plan, resulting in new warnings from the Kremlin over growing foreign involvement in the conflict.
“Now, amid talks of long-range missiles, Vladimir Putin has sent a clear warning to the United States and its allies,” Antonov said. “He reminded them of the direct involvement of American so-called ‘technical specialists’ in planning and carrying out strikes against Russia.”
Antonov compared the discussions surrounding providing such missiles to Ukraine to “a diver frozen before the decisive jump into the abyss.” He added, “Just think about how far the Western elites have gone in their desire to profit from pitting two Slavic peoples against each other.”
He also referenced the recent reports of a U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jet being downed by friendly, potentially from a U.S.-supplied Patriot air defense system, as a “clear and obvious confirmation that the Ukrainian army is not ready to operate modern Western weapons.”
Asked last month about the ongoing deliberations of allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike Russia, Biden simply said, “We’re working that out right now.” No policy changes have since been announced.
Later in September, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller responded to a question about the use of U.S.-provided long-range missiles in the war by stating that there was no “one magic capability that would change the face of the conflict.”
“We look at all of the capabilities and all the tactics and all the support that we provide Ukraine in totality,” Miller said at the time, “and when we approve any new weapon system or any new tactic, we look at how it’s going to affect the entire battlefield and Ukraine’s entire strategy. And that’s what we’ll continue to do.”
Last week, however, Zelensky accused Western partners of “dragging out” the supply of long-range weapons during a meeting with new NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
U.S. President Joe Biden (R) meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on September 26. Antonov isn’t hopeful that fighting between Russia and Ukraine would change when the next president takes office. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
A ‘Sobering’ Farewell Message
Antonov left Washington in the midst of the most challenging period in the U.S.-Russia relationship since the end of the Cold War. While he continued to advocate for improved ties, he also acknowledged the depth of the bilateral deterioration between the world’s top two nuclear powers.
“The average American reader, who sees and hears on a daily basis a stream of anti-Russian reports and articles from the media and notes Russophobic slogans coming from government officials and legislators, would hardly be surprised by an unsatisfactory assessment of bilateral ties between Russia and the U.S.,” Antonov said.
“Relations between Moscow and Washington are going through an extremely turbulent period, arguably touching the lowest point in their history,” he added. “Trust between our countries has been completely lost. With rare exceptions, almost all areas of interaction have been ‘frozen.'”
He saw “only a few” politicians and organizations today that he said, “are trying to look behind the curtain of propaganda clichés and understand what really provoked this ‘ice age’ in Russian-American relations.”
Otherwise, he saw few efforts “to take a critical look at the situation and try to understand the root causes of the downward spiral, rather than throwing out sharp accusations of ‘unprovoked aggression,’ ‘imperialism,’ and alleged attempts to subjugate nearly half of Europe.”
In the White House, he described an administration that “continues to burn one bridge after another.”
“We believe that normalization of relations is valuable in itself for either party,” Antonov said. “It takes two to tango. We will not forcefully invite anyone to cooperate.”
Antonov was not especially hopeful that the situation would change depending on whether Harris or Trump emerged victorious next month.
“We stay clear-eyed and understand that in the current circumstances, there is little chance for people who may assume power in the United States not to ultimately find themselves under the dense influence of the ‘deep state’ and corporate structures that are Russophobic towards Russia,” Antonov said.
“The debris in Russia-U.S. relations is so huge that it is extremely difficult to clear it up even with very serious political will,” he added. “Blind support for the Kiev regime and its terrorism on Russian territory puts an end to even an attempt to approach the discussion of normalization of relations.”
With little indication of peace on the horizon and the threat of an even larger-scale confrontation still looming, Antonov cautioned against those who “believe that through controlled escalation it is possible to avoid the worst and weaken Russia, send it into oblivion—to the ‘dump’ of history.”
“The main sobering message that is now required to avoid fatal mistakes is to stop and cease the openly hostile policy towards the Russian Federation,” Antonov said. “Recognize that our country has national interests and a legitimate right to ensure the safety of its citizens, to have its own alternative viewpoint and the opportunity to share it with anyone who is interested in hearing it.
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