HOW PUTIN COULD TEAR DOWN THE TEMPLE
September 22, 2022 -Durt Fibo

Gasps of confused concern rattled the troposphere as Vladimir Putin’s latest ukase shattered television screens around the world. After a day’s delay, he returned like Ivan the Terrible to resume command of his ongoing catastrophe, intoning orders for “partial mobilization” of 300,000 troops, rigged referendums, and what his audience took to be threats of nuclear attacks.

In Russia, the immediate reactions included the Moscow stock market (MOEX) plummeting 10%, a completely booked-up flight system out of the country, and the long-delayed gatherings of anti-war protesters in dozens of Russian cities. The nation trembles as Putin shakes the pillars around him like a blinded self-imagined Samson.

Where Moscow intends to find and impress 300,000 new troops is another stonefaced mystery. Or stoneheaded. Russia began its move against Ukraine with a reported buildup of 200,000 men, and now finds them unable to muster for roll call, let alone head the right direction. Much of the vanguard assault forces were cynically assembled from a number of Russia’s semi-colonial regions, virtually designed to leave a foul racist impression on the surviving Ukrainians, and it should be expected that Moscow will continue to push this strategy, although there have in the past month and a half, been grumblings regarding expendability and mislaid allegiances in some of these former ethnic territories.

Putin’s mobilization orders (another surprise for the Chiefs of Staff in a list of 7 months’ worth of them), are publicly limited to those who have previously served, or are now in the reserves. But the ruling powers have already enlisted their manufacturing base into the gag, and lifelong civilian workingmen have complained to Russian media about being suddenly handed orders from management dispatching them to military centers.

The Ukrainian earth and people in the quasi-mitigated camps Putin will force to vote for ‘joining’ Russia are resisting, but precisely because Putin has constructed his pyramidal Ponzi Russia with the mindset of his natural KGB demons, the authorities he’s sent to organize, discipline and brutalize the locals are not just some versions of historical Political Commissars, but genuine FSB officials –the modern incarnation of the KGB he grew up in. They are of a breed that likes to grin “mission accomplished.” Vladdie’s Swiss cheese thinking has congealed into an idea that, once these areas are part of the Motherland by referendum, he’ll be entitled to do whatever he feels necessary (and gloriously patriotic) to defend what has conveniently become ‘Russia.’

Which brings us to the ultimate intimations of nuclear attacks. Since the first debates at Los Alamos, the issue of a delivery system was a difficult and essential component of the whole atomic bomb production. As mankind devolved and weaponry evolved, more variations on this crucial aspect emerged. Taking an elevated, and less emotional, overview of the Ukraine war as it truly is, however, we can spot wormholes leading back to the desperate mind of the man in the Kremlin.

Ukraine has four operating nuclear power plants with a total of 15 reactors, which before the war provided up to 50% of Ukraine’s total electricity generation. These reactors differ from those at Chernobyl, which was permanently closed in 2000. Nonetheless, in the rush to pour into Ukraine, Chernobyl was ‘conquered’ by Russians on the first day of the invasion; by the beginning of April, Russia departed the plant, along with their dead and dying soldiers who’d been ordered to dig trenches in the forbidden “Red Forest” and were secretly carted away, although the reactors principally remain in Russian hands, it being the most direct path from Belarus to Kyiv. Two more plants are in the northwest of the country: the Rivne, about 75 miles south of the Belarus border, and the Khlemnitski, roughly that same distance from and slightly southeast of Rivne, both so far unmolested, but both within the range of Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk –cities which have seen Russian bombardments.

The Russian incursion enveloped the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (Europe’s largest), thrumming 30 to 100 miles distant from the Donbass fronts, and then marched, 160 miles away, towards the South Ukraine (Pivdennoukrainsk) plant –Ukraine’s second largest– in the Mykolaiv province, which is adjacent to the active southern fronts, and which Russian forces have repeatedly made advances on. A Russian missile strike led to a hit 300 meters away from the South Ukrainian plant this week. Back north at Zaporizhzhia, the plant’s operating staff was and is, per the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA): “subject to constant high stress and pressure” which “could lead to increased human error with implications on nuclear safety.” Unqualified Russian forces of no clear rank maintain full control of running Zaporizhzhia and its Ukrainian staff, who are overworked, undersourced, and in all respects are being held hostage.

The IAEA has been dispatching constant alarms about damage done to the Zaporizhzhia plant ever since Russian forces captured it on March 4, with “heavy fighting and artillery barrages.” Shelling around and actually towards the plant on August 5 stirred the IAEA to warn: “Any military firepower directed at or from the facility would amount to playing with fire, with potentially catastrophic consequences.” Continued firing during August and September repeatedly disabled the plant’s connections to the surrounding power grid. Whenever offsite power was lost, the two reactors that have been operating since the Russian takeover would have to shut down for safety reasons and then restart when power lines were repaired. According to Ukraine’s nuclear safety agency, the plant was reconnected to the grid as of September 12, but “all six of the plant’s reactors were in cold shutdown because of ongoing shelling in the area.”

Only after months of frantic negotiations, an IAEA team arrived at the Zaporizhzhia plant –running a gauntlet of Russian rockets– on September 1, to assess the conditions there. Four days of that yielded the IAEA’s report, which described extensive damage to the plant, its facilities, and its and surrounding infrastructure. The IAEA assured the world that any further military vandalism “represented a constant threat to nuclear safety and security because critical safety functions (containment of the radioactivity and cooling in particular) could be impacted.” Furthermore, Zaporizhzhia is packed with Russian armaments.

So who needs delivery systems? As bordering nations scurry to integrate NATO defenses and heavy offensive capabilities, distributing iodine tablets and dreaming of bombs falling down through the night; as presidents and prime ministers find themselves trapped into volleying threats of nuclear strikes; as escaping conscripts and convicts try to outrun possible tactical nuclear weapons, the smirk on Putin’s face should serve to focus our attention on the explosive atomic powers he can exploit without even lifting a finger.