As a silent form of retaliation over the US/NATO bombing of the NordStream pipelines a few days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the order to transfer the control of the Ukrainian licensed Zaporozhye nuclear power plant to a Russian management.
The move comes as Moscow integrates former Ukrainian territories following referendums.
President Vladimir Putin has issued an order placing the formerly Ukrainian Zaporozhye power plant under Russian management. A presidential decree on the fate of Europe’s largest nuclear facility was published on Wednesday.
The facility will be operated by a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned nuclear power giant Rosatom. For now, the facility will continue to function under Ukrainian-issued licenses until it obtains Russian-issued equivalents, according to the decree.
The move comes as Moscow finalizes the accession of four formerly Ukrainian regions – Zaporozhye, Kherson, as well as Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics – to Russia. The territories overwhelmingly backed a proposal to join Russia in referendums last month. The votes were firmly rejected by Kiev and its Western backers, who denounced them as “sham” votes.
In recent weeks, Zaporozhye nuclear power plant has been subjected to repeated missile, artillery and drone attacks, attributed by the Russian military to Ukrainian forces, as well as targeted by saboteurs in apparent attempts to seize the facility from Russian forces. Kiev, along with multiple Western officials, however, has been blaming Moscow for shelling the nuclear facility it controls.
The Zaporozhye plant was seized by the Russian military early in the ongoing conflict. Until now, however, it has remained under Ukrainian management.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
https://www.rt.com/russia/564119-putin-zaporozhye-nuclear-plant/
Analysis
This illustrates the fact that while the US/NATO actions are mostly impulsive, Russia’s response is always proactively calculated several moves ahead, as can be deduced from the fact that the Zaporozhye plant was seized by the Russian military early in the ongoing conflict.
Worse, while the latest US/NATO action against Russia resulted in more suffering for the Europeans due to the long term interruption of energy supply, which could risk a total de-industrialization of Germany, Russia just gained Europe’s largest nuclear plant.
How painful a slap in the face could that be for Pentagon war planners?
The bottomline is that, as the Russian deNazification SMO over Ukraine drags on and more of the country’s assets are lost, the lesser will be the appetite for NATO to continue supporting Ukraine. Oh, if only they could go back to the Minsk Agreement.
In the end, only a small portion of Ukrainian West will be allowed to exist by the Russian Federation, for which part Poland is also interested to recover from the neoNazis.
