The situation around Zaporizhzhya NPP gradually begins to resemble a classic theatre of the absurd.
As is known, this critical facility has been under the control of the Russian military for many months now, ensuring its uninterrupted operation. Moreover, Ukrainian specialists are still engaged in maintaining the operation of the power plant. In the context of the crisis unfolding around it, the NPP is in an unprecedentedly transparent mode and has, for example, been awaiting a visit from an IAEA delegation led by Rafael Grossi, the organisation’s director general.
It would seem that maintaining of the status-quo should be beneficial for Kiev as well, for which the existence of a sort of safety zone around Zaporizhzhia NPP would be a guarantee of energy supply for the citizens of the country and prevention of a catastrophe of grandiose scale, which may hit Ukrainians themselves first of all. In practice, however, as is always the case with the regime of Volodymyr Zelensky, something else is happening.
The nuclear power plant is under daily fire from the Ukrainian side, each time increasing the threat of the “Chernobyl scenario”. Ukraine is flatly obstructing the normalisation of the situation and, with the help of sympathetic bureaucrats at the UN Secretariat, is repeatedly wrecking Grossi’s visit, for which Russia has created all the necessary conditions. Moreover, both in the framework of the information war and during discussions, say, at the UN Security Council meetings, a counterintuitive thesis is thrown into the discussion that Russian Armed Forces are allegedly shelling their own positions at an extremely dangerous site.
In parallel, Kyiv and its handlers are attempting to further confuse public opinion by putting forward mutually exclusive versions of the development of events. On the one hand, last week, through the once-reputable The Wall Street Journal, journalists fed with Ukrainian information rubbish suggested that Russia was ready to divert energy flows generated by nuclear power plants to territories freed from the Kiev regime and Crimea. Of course, no evidence was presented to prove this assumption.
On the other hand, in recent days, with frightening frequency, statements by NATO officials – first Poland, then Great Britain – have started sounding that exactly the events around the Zaporizhzhya NPP may turn out to be the very casus belli that the alliance lacked for so long for direct involvement into the conflict. One may recall that U.S. officials, through leaks to the media, have repeatedly admitted Washington’s direct intervention in case of “use of weapons of mass destruction” in Ukraine – and the myth, actively generated by Western political strategists about an impending Russian strike on the nuclear power plant, may be interpreted in this way by supporters of aggravation.
One is tempted to associate it with the classic Hollywood movie “The Tail Wags the Dog,” with the only caveat that life may turn out to be far more frightening and harsh than that witty satire on Washington morals.
It seems clear whose interests are behind the escalating tensions around the nuclear plant and who is pushing Kiev to escalate. There are too many interests involved in taking the conflict to the next level. These include “the collective Joe Biden,” for whom, as many US analysts rightly point out, a major foreign policy crisis remains the last chance to rally the nation around his party on the eve of the congressional elections and avoid a resounding defeat. And the British hawks who are actively promoting the little-known Liz Truss for premiership – tough, on the verge of losing her mind, rhetoric against the Kremlin was initially one of her few leverage points in the race for the coveted post. And the same Polish leaders, who have once again clashed with the European Union leadership and are once again trying to distract Brussels liberals from human rights abuses in their country through the use of the Ukrainian card.
Do all these figures realise that millions of Europeans are being held hostage in their games and, in the long term, the entire globe, which is fast approaching the brink of a global nuclear conflict? It is difficult to answer definitively. The degradation and a kind of Ukrainisation of the managerial and intellectual level of Western elites has reached a frightening level and is capable of producing the most tragic results. It is only obvious that in the anti-Russian coalition there are many who want to turn the situation at Zaporizhzhya NPP into a kind of analog of “shot in Sarajevo”. Their hopes are illusory. Russia, as President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said, is prepared for any scenario, including the most pessimistic ones. And one can only wish fortitude to the defenders of nuclear power plants who, risking their lives, are quietly moving the world every day away from the threshold of irreversible and dramatic upheavals.
Oleg Karpovich, Mikhail Trojansky, Vice-Rectors of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Izvestia newspaper
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