This Blog is created to stress the importance of Peace as an environmental directive. “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” – Harry Truman
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Vienna - China clashed (click here) with the countries in the so-called AUKUS alliance at the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Friday over their plan to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, capping a week in which Beijing has repeatedly railed against the project.
Under the alliance between Washington, London and Canberra announced last year Australia plans to acquire at least eight nuclear submarines that International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi has said will be fuelled by "very highly enriched uranium", suggesting it could be weapons-grade or close to it....
Tehran – Iran said (click here) on Monday London’s lack of “political will” has thwarted a deal with Kazakhstan on import of 950 tons of yellow cake, an acquisition that would not violate the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Margarita Simonyan, (click here) the editor in chief of RT and one of Russia’s top propagandists, has in the space of seven months gone from supreme confidence that Kyiv would fall in days to something like despair at Russia’s shambolic mobilization and battlefield defeats. In addition to confessing to “terrible grief,” she admits that she now sings Russia’s national anthem using the old Soviet lyrics. That choice is appropriate, because Moscow now specializes in Soviet-style bluster and hysteria. Nowhere is this more evident than in the nuclear threats issued by President Vladimir Putin.
In his speeches announcing the annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts that his battered army does not fully control, Putin raised the specter of nuclear war. In the finest tradition of Soviet whataboutism, he spoke of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, calling them an American precedent for … what, he did not exactly say, but the meaning was clear. Since then, the menace has been amplified by subordinates like Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s security council, as well as panicky tub-thumpers like Simonyan’s colleague Vladimir Solovyov.
It is impossible for the USA (click here) to sit out any nuclear threat and exchange. No one believed Putin would lead according to a five year calendar that included invading Ukraine. He is now playing his hand as he planned it. The nukes are next. He has always stated he would use whatever it took to protect the Russia people. In his mind this is the time for such nuclear measures. No one has invaded Russia and partly that is the problem. Putin isn't rational in a way that most international relations play out, he is enamored with his
Any threat to use nuclear weapons by a country that possesses them has to be taken seriously. That’s particularly true of Russia, a country whose military doctrine has always entertained the deployment of relatively low-yield nuclear weapons in a war. To be clear, low-yield can mean a detonation equivalent to 5,000 or 10,000 tons of TNT. When Soviet war plans for Europe were revealed after the Cold War, analysts blanched at the magnitude of the nuclear assault the Soviet general staff had contemplated as the preparatory bombardment for a potential drive to the English Channel....
Putin is not demented, his plans are demented and woefully bad in preparation and deployed. Putin has practiced brinkmanship and gotten away with it for far too long. He is convinced he is invincible.
June 9, 2022
By Anton Trojanovski
Among President Vladimir V. Putin’s motives (click here) for invading Ukraine, his view of himself as being on a historic mission to rebuild the Russian Empire has always loomed large. On Thursday, Mr. Putin went further, comparing himself directly to Peter the Great.
It was a new, if carefully staged, glimpse into Mr. Putin’s sense of his own grandeur.
Mr. Putin on Thursday marked the 350th anniversary of Peter’s birth by visiting a new multimedia exhibit about the czar in Moscow. He then held a town-hall-style meeting with young Russian entrepreneurs and opened it by reflecting on Peter’s conquest of the Baltic coast during his 18th-century war with Sweden.
Mr. Putin described the land Peter conquered as rightfully Russian.
“He was returning it and strengthening it,” Mr. Putin said, leaning back in his armchair, before hinting with a smile that he was now doing the same thing in his war in Ukraine. “Well, apparently, it has also fallen to us to return and to strengthen.”...
Syria is right there. These are supposed to be Russian allies. I find the timing of Iran's statements about building/acquiring nuclear weapons ominous to Putin's ambitions. This is no consequence.
August 4, 2022 By Jon Gambrell
Dubai - Iranian officials (click here) now speak openly about something long denied by Tehran as it enriches uranium at its closest-ever levels to weapons-grade material: The Islamic Republic is ready to build an atomic weapon at will.
The remarks could be bluster to force more bargaining-table concessions from the U.S. without planning to seek the bomb. Or, as analysts warn, Iran could reach a point like North Korea did some 20 years ago where it decides having the ultimate weapon outweighs any further international sanctions.
All this could be put to the test Thursday as Iran, the U.S. and the European Union prepare for a snap summit that appears to be a last-ditch effort in Vienna to revive Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal amid the new pressure. That includes one Iranian video online suggesting the country’s ballistic missiles could “turn New York into a heap of rubble from hell.”...
The U.S. ramped up warnings (click here) of a possible Russian attack on Ukraine, with President Joe Biden saying a “false-flag” event may be underway and a top diplomat describing Moscow as moving toward an “imminent invasion.”
Russian officials said no invasion of Ukraine was underway and none was planned. But the Kremlin said in an official response to the Biden administration’s proposed security assurances that the offers were unsatisfactory and Russia might have to resort to unspecified “military-technical measures.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken changed his travel plans Thursday to address the United Nations Security Council on the crisis. Russia expelled the U.S. deputy chief of mission in Moscow, Bart Gorman, in what a State Department spokesman called an unprovoked move....
The Free World needs to ready their first strike weapons. Ukraine must evacuate the provinces Russia is claiming is part of their country now. Putin will release nuclear horror on the land that is supposed to be part of his country. Absolutely, he will.
Moving military equipment by train is a favorite of Russian command. They are going to launch nukes and the Free World needs to have their first strike weapons ready for launch when Putin releases his particular type of heel.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday (click here) that it did not want to take part in "nuclear rhetoric" from the West after a media report that Russia was preparing to demonstrate its willingness to use nuclear weapons in its conflict with Ukraine.
The Times newspaper reported on Monday that the NATO military alliance had warned members that President Vladimir Putin was set to demonstrate his willingness to use nuclear weapons by carrying out a nuclear test on Ukraine's border....
There is a counter to this report that is somewhat but not completely skeptical.
October 3, 2022
By Joseph Trevithick
Imagery has emerged on social media (click here) recently that shows one or more Russian trains carrying a number of rare 4x4 BPM-97 Vystrel light armored vehicles fitted with turrets armed with 30mm cannons. The movement of the BPM-97s has garnered unique interest as they may be associated with the Russian military's 12th Main Directorate, which oversees the country's nuclear arsenal. These observations come amid growing threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials in Russia about the potential use of nuclear weapons as Ukrainian forces continue regaining territory. As such, they seem to have led to some startling headlines that seem unsubstantiated. The fact is that while such a deployment could very well point to a more ominous nuclear operation in the works, there are many other reasons, some of them glaring, for such a movement, in addition to just normal training operations....
President Zelensky is a great man. He has accomplished what many believed impossible. However, he was in denial of any harsh actions by Putin and believed he would not invade Ukraine.
