(MENAFN- Asia Times) US President Joe Biden and NATO leaders must prepare their military forces for a rapid and boots-on-the-ground intervention to stop Russia from even considering creating a nuclear incident at Europe's largest nuclear 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 – on March 14, 2023, in Washington.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, was forced to rush off to kiev and later to Zaporizhzhia to ensure the continued safety of ZNPP after the decision, blamed by many on Russia, 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 at least fail to 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 leave some of Ukraine's most fertile agriculture land barren for decades but would also trigger catastrophic economic events in both Russia and Europe not seen since the Great Depression.
Former Italian prime minister mario draghi , who only speaks when absolutely necessary, has warned that a Ukrainian defeat by Russia would be the end of the 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 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston on June 9.
Alexander Shtaynberger, the New York-based Ukrainian-American chief risk officer for the London-based Laidlaw & Co wealth management group, says 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 members of the Group of Seven has only multiplied the risk that ZNPP will be used by Russian forces as an ultimate“scorched-earth” weapon ahead of a defeat by Ukraine.
The decision to destroy the Kakhovka dam, if Russia was responsible as alleged, 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 ethnic Russians.
Saltovka, Kharkiv.
During a recent visit to the working-class neighborhood of Saltovka in Kharkiv – an area that has taken the brunt of Russian shelling – one saw residents living in half-bombed-out apartment buildings like German city dwellers in the aftermath of World War II. These residents are all ethnic-Russian Ukrainians whom Putin supposedly sought to amalgamate into his Greater Russia homeland. Russia's single goal in the war was to make sure that Crimea could operate independently from Ukraine and thus invaded the area around the Sea of Azov 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 agricultural economy, means that Russia no longer believes it will be able to defend the area it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has signaled over the past weeks 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.
One prominent anti-Ukraine voice that has been removed is Fox News' Tucker Carlson, albeit for losing Fox owner Rupert Murdoch nearly US$800 million to settle a defamation brought by the Canadian-owned Dominion Voting Systems.
News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch speaks to Capitol Intelligence/Black Business News (BBN) using CI Glass at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit in Washington on November 15, 2016.
US Marine Corps 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 former US 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 into new independent states.
The readiness of the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to intervene could hasten the end the war and the resignation or removal Putin from power. Many argue that Putin would agree to 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 could also argue that he resigned to preserve the Russian Federation, the same reason the late 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 Ukrainian 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, Germany, by 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.
Peter K Semler is the chief executive editor and founder of Capitol Intelligence. Previously, he was the Washington, DC, bureau chief for Mergermarket (Dealreporter/Debtwire) of the Financial Times and headed political and economic coverage of the US House of Representatives and Senate.
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