Ukraine admits shelling area around nuclear plant
Kiev’s General Staff also says there are no Russian troops inside at the Zaporozhye facility

The Ukrainian military publicly admitted striking the area around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in an official General Staff briefing on Friday. Previously, Kiev had claimed that Russian forces used the plant as a military base; now it says all troops have relocated due to the visit by IAEA inspectors.

“In the areas of the settlements of Kherson and Energodar, accurate strikes by our troops destroyed three enemy artillery systems, as well as an ammunition depot and up to a company of personnel,” said the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the daily briefing.

The military also claimed that, due to the arrival of the IAEA inspection team, the Russian “occupiers removed all military equipment from the territory of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. About 100 units moved to the plant ‘Atom Energomash’ and the rest were dispersed in the nearest settlements.”

Energodar and the Zaporozhye facility have been under Russian control since early March, and functioned without problems until drone and artillery attacks began in July. Kiev has argued that the shelling was a false-flag operation by Moscow to make Ukraine look bad, but also that Russia was using the plant as a base for heavy artillery and equipment.

Moscow has consistently denied the accusations, saying that only lightly armed guards were deployed at the facility to ensure its security. On Friday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Ukrainian claims that Moscow was using the facility to attack Ukrainian positions “with long-range artillery systems” were “blatant lies.”

“I state with confidence that we do not have heavy weapons at the territory of the nuclear power stations and in adjacent neighborhoods,” Shoigu said at a meeting in Moscow, adding that he hoped the IAEA inspectors would testify to this as well.

Shoigu also said there have been 29 attacks against the Zaporozhye facility since July 18, involving 120 artillery projectiles and 16 kamikaze drones.

The IAEA mission arrived at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant on Thursday, led by agency chief Rafael Grossi personally. Grossi said the IAEA planned to have a “continued presence” on the site. As the IAEA team was en route, a group of Ukrainian commandos used boats to land in Energodar and attempted to storm the power plant. Their goal, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, was to use the IAEA inspectors as “human shields.” However, Russian troops destroyed both the initial strike group and its reinforcements.

◾Western media reports on the visit of the Nuclear Security Team to Zaporozhye Nuclear plant.

◾The “physical integrity” of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in south-eastern Ukraine has been “violated”, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said.

◾“It is obvious that the plant and physical integrity of the plant has been violated several times,” Grossi told reporters.

◾Grossi insisted he and his team had seen “everything I request to see”, but he conceded he was not able to talk to any of the Russian soldiers who have commandeered the plant’s crisis centre as their headquarters.

◾The IAEA is there to stay for as long as it is needed. We are not leaving. We’re not going anywhere,” Grossi said. “For those who may have intentions on the plant, knowing that international inspectors are there, witnessing and informing immediately what is happening, has an inherently very important stabilising effect.”

⚡️ Russian Defence Ministry report on the progress of the special military operation in Ukraine (September 3, 2022)

Part 2 (read Part 1)

◽️ Despite the presence of IAEA representatives at Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, Kiev regime made another attempt to capture this facility.

💥 On September 2, at about 11.00 PM (Moscow time), two groups of a total of 42 cutters and motor boats with over 250 servicemen from special operation forces and foreign mercenaries on board made an attempt to disembark at the shore of Kakhovka reservoir near Energodar and Dneproprudnoye.

💥 The manpower was attacked by 4 Su-30 and 2 Ka-52 helicopters of Russian Aerospace Forces that has resulted in the elimination of 20 cutters and boats.
The rest of the vessels turned back and headed towards the Ukrainian coast.

💥 Russian artillery, including Malka high-capacity howitzers, launched an attack at the Ukrainian part of the shore near Vysshetarasovka and Chervonodneprovka where the rest of the manpower had disembarked.

◽️ According to available information, the unsuccessful provocation of Ukrainian nationalists has resulted in the elimination of 47 militants, including 10 foreign mercenaries, as well as in wounding 23.

#MoD #Russia #Ukraine #report
@mod_russia_en

Do you remember the map, provided by OSInt expert Rybar of the Ukrainian "breakthrough" recently and our comments on it? Here we come again. Situation for 11:00 on the 3 of September.
Three pontoon bridges that were supplying the Ukrainian foothold are destroyed. All area is under heavy fire from land and air. Aviation is using 500 kg bombs. Nevertheless, Ukrainian side continues to gather reserves on the other side of the Inhulets river and are trying to bring those reinforcements into action.

Soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are putting out fire on their own burning positions.

Over the past month, 174 brigade and battalion command posts have been hit in Ukraine, and 601 pieces of heavy weapons and artillery systems, mostly of Western manufacture, have been destroyed, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on September 2.
19 aircraft, six helicopters and 188 unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down, 226 HIMARS rockets were intercepted. The attempt of the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Nikolaev-Kryvyi Rih direction continues, but the enemy suffers significant losses. Experts believe that the Ukrainian leadership put everything on the offensive near Kherson, since it does not even have a ghostly chance in other directions.

Strike directions
Over the past two weeks, the Russian Armed Forces, together with units of the people's militia of the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics, have taken control of a large defense center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (APU) in the village of Peski, Sergei Shoigu said at a conference call at the Defense Ministry.

Near Donetsk, the echeloned and engineered defense of the nationalists was hacked. During the retreat, the Ukrainian army left a large number of weapons and wounded. Russian military doctors provided qualified medical assistance to all the victims.

On the Kherson-Nikolaev direction in the area of Aleksandrovka, our troops reached the administrative border of the Nikolaev region. Blagodatnoye settlement was liberated. An attempt to attack the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Nikolaev-Kryvyi Rih and other directions continues, the enemy suffers significant losses, the minister emphasized.

Some Ukrainian channels were spreading disinformation that Shoigu has been "suspended"... Don't thing so.
#TransFormator

Putin explains Ukraine operation goals
Russia is trying to end the war Ukraine waged on its own citizens after the 2014 coup, Vladimir Putin says

Moscow seeks to end the conflict in Ukraine, which began in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup, as well as prevent the emergence of an “anti-Russian enclave” in its territory, Vladimir Putin has said. The Russian president made the remarks on Thursday during an open class held for Russian schoolchildren called the “Important Talk.”

“Everyone believes that some kind of aggression on the part of Russia is happening today. No one understands or knows that after the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, the people of Donetsk, Lugansk, Crimea – a significant part of them, in any case – did not want to recognize the outcome of this coup,” Putin said.

New post-Maidan Ukrainian leaders began a war on their own citizens and “have been waging it for eight years,” he went on. “And our goal, our mission, the mission of our soldiers, of the Donbass militias, is to end this war, to protect people and, of course, Russia itself,” the president explained.

An anti-Russian enclave is being created in the territory of present-day Ukraine, which is threatening our country.

Putin also touched upon the state of and approach to school education in Ukraine, telling schoolchildren about what Russia’s Minister of Education Sergey Kravtsov witnessed during his recent visit to Donetsk and other territories liberated during the ongoing conflict. The president admitted that the minister’s account shocked him and he “was sitting with his mouth wide open” during Kravtsov’s report.

They didn’t even know that Ukraine and Russia were part of a single state – the Soviet Union. They just don’t know it. That’s how they were taught.


“[Ukrainian] schoolchildren did not know the Crimea bridge exists, they thought it was a fake,” Putin said, referring to the Kerch road and railway bridge erected between mainland Russia and the peninsula following the 2014 reunification.

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.

Some basic and important things that are worth reminding. Some people consider them obvious, some people do not understand and/or accept them at all.
#TransFormator

China fumes over US arms deal with Taiwan
Beijing insists that Washington ‘immediately’ reverse recently approved deals for missiles and radar systems

China’s envoy to the United States has condemned proposed weapons sales to Taiwan worth more than $1 billion, saying the deals will strike a blow to its relations with Washington and send the “wrong signals” to “separatist forces” on the island.

A spokesman for China’s embassy in the US, Liu Pengyu, issued a lengthy statement denouncing the new arms transfers after they were approved earlier on Friday, noting that Beijing is “firmly opposed” to any such sales.

“China urges the US side to honor its commitment, earnestly abide by the one-China principle, … stop arms sales to and military interactions with Taiwan, and immediately revoke relevant arms sales to Taiwan, lest it should cause more damage to China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” Liu said, adding that the sales would “[interfere] in China's internal affairs and [undermine] China's sovereignty and security interests.”

Earlier in the day, the US State Department authorized three separate military sales to the Taiwanese government, including an $85.6-million contract for 100 Sidewinder missiles, $355 million for 60 Harpoon munitions and another $665.4 million to fund “logistical and program support” for a radar system produced by American arms dealer Raytheon. Together the sales would total some $1.1 billion, and are pending final approval from Congress.

Though Taiwan has long been self-governed, Beijing maintains the island is part of China’s sovereign territory and has vowed to eventually reunify. Despite ongoing relations between Washington and Taipei, including a recent high-profile visit by US House speaker Nancy Pelosi, the United States does not officially recognize Taiwan as an independent state.

That is disclosing the real aim of Pelosi's visit to Taiwan recently - to ignite tensions to sell more weapons. Simple.
#China #TransFormator

A long read for weekend from another Western "expert" in "The National Interest". There are some elements of understanding:

THIS TENSION between lofty ambition and strategic reality is nothing new, particularly for the United States. Since the earliest days of the republic, Americans have understood the purpose of their power to entail not only security, but also the spread of liberal democracy at home and abroad. As Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, “we have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.”

Paine was surely engaging in hyperbole, but successive generations of Americans have taken the nation’s exceptionalist calling to heart—with quite impressive results. Through the power of its example as well as its many exertions abroad—including World War I, World War II, and the Cold War—the United States has succeeded in expanding the footprint of liberal democracy. At the time of the nation’s founding, republics were far and few between. Today, more than half of the world’s countries are full or partial democracies. The United States played a leading role in effecting this transformation.

But these ideological aspirations have at times fueled overreach, producing outcomes that compromise the nation’s idealist ambitions. The founding generation was determined to build an extended republic that would stretch all the way to the Pacific coast—a goal that the nation achieved by the middle of the nineteenth century. Much of the United States’ westward expansion took place under the exalted banner of Manifest Destiny, which provided ideological justification for expanding the frontier—but also moral cover for trampling on Native Americans and launching a war of choice against Mexico that led to U.S. annexation of roughly half of Mexican territory. The Mexican-American War and the bout of expansion that accompanied it came back to haunt the United States by intensifying the sectional rift over slavery and pushing the North and South toward civil war.

President William McKinley in 1898 embarked on a war to expel Spain from Cuba—one of its few remaining colonies in the hemisphere—insisting that Americans had to act “in the cause of humanity.” Yet victory in the Spanish-American War turned the United States itself into an imperial power, as it asserted control over Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and Pacific, including the Philippines. “There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them,” McKinley insisted as U.S. forces occupied the Philippines. The resulting insurgency led to the death of some 4,000 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Filipino fighters and civilians. The United States held on to the Philippines until 1946.

As he prepared the country for entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson declared before Congress that “the world must be made safe for democracy.” After U.S. forces helped bring the war to a close, he played a leading role in negotiations over the League of Nations, a global body that was to preserve peace through collective action, dispute resolution, and disarmament. But such idealist ambitions proved too much even for Americans. The Senate shot down U.S. membership in the League; Wilson’s ideological overreach cleared the way for the stubborn isolationism of the interwar era.

Just before launching the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush affirmed that “we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty ... they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.” The result of the war in Iraq was far different: region-wide suffering and sectarian conflict poised to continue for generations. As for Afghanistan, Bush proclaimed in 2004: “Now the country is changing. There’s women’s rights. There’s equality under the law. Young girls now go to school, many for the first time ever, thanks to the United States and our coalition of liberators.” But two decades of exhaustive U.S. efforts to bring stability and democracy to Afghanistan fell embarrassingly short, with the U.S. withdrawal last summer giving way to Taliban rule and a humanitarian nightmare. Across these historical episodes, noble ambitions backfired with dreadful consequences.

THE UKRAINE question has similarly exposed the inescapable tensions between lofty ambitions and geopolitical realities. These tensions were, for the most part, in abeyance amid the bipolarity of the Cold War, when geopolitical expedience guided the U.S. strategy of containment. The Yalta agreement struck by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin at the end of World War II was the ultimate realist compromise, leaving much of Eastern Europe under Soviet domination. Roosevelt and Churchill were wisely yielding principle to pragmatism by providing Soviet Russia with a buffer zone on its western flank. Such strategic restraint paid off handsomely; it contributed to stability during the long decades of the Cold War, buying time for a patient policy of containment that ultimately led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union.

NATO’s eastward expansion then began in the 1990s, the era of unipolarity, when Washington was confident that the triumph of American power and purpose would usher in the universalization of democracy, capitalism, and a liberal, rules-based international order. The Clinton administration embraced a grand strategy of “democratic enlargement”—a key plank of which was opening NATO’s doors to Europe’s new democracies and formally welcoming into the West the states of the defunct and discredited Warsaw Pact.

NATO’s eastward enlargement has fostered both moral and strategic gains. The West capitalized on the opportunity to reverse Yalta; NATO members could reassert their moral authority by integrating Europe’s newest democracies. The allure of meeting the political standards for entry into the Western alliance helped guide through democratic transitions more than a dozen countries that long suffered under communist rule. Opening NATO’s doors also provided the alliance strategic depth and increased aggregate military strength. The defense guarantee that comes with membership serves as a strong deterrent to Russian adventurism—a prized commodity given Moscow’s renewed appetite for invading its neighbors. Indeed, Finland and Sweden have left behind decades of neutrality in order to avail themselves of that guarantee.

But despite these principled and practical benefits, the enlargement of NATO also came with a significant strategic downside: it laid the foundation for a post-Cold War security order that excluded Russia while bringing the world’s most formidable military alliance ever closer to its borders. It was precisely for this reason that the Clinton administration initially launched the Partnership for Peace—a security framework that enabled all European states to cooperate with NATO without drawing new dividing lines. But that alternative fell by the wayside early in January 1994, when President Bill Clinton declared in Prague that “the question is no longer whether NATO will take on new members but when and how.” The first wave of expansion extended membership to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999, followed since by four additional bouts of enlargement. So far, NATO has admitted fifteen countries (encompassing some 100 million people) that were formerly in Russia’s sphere of influence.

Continue reading

🇮🇳 For our Indian friends (and not only them)🕉

CANWAL SIBAL
Diplomat, former Foreign Secretary of India, former Indian Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia.

RASIGAN MAHARAJ
General Director of the Institute for Economic Research in the Field of Innovation at the Tswane Technical University (South Africa).

THE INTERVIEW IS PREPARED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE TRANSFER OF "INTERNATIONAL REVIEW" (RUSSIA 24)
The West is fighting a battle against the rest of the world and is trying to erase Russia from the geographical map. There is no system of European security and is not expected. On the eve of the new political season, we asked several experts in international affairs what had irreversibly changed in the previous six months.

It is published in Russian, so I had to reversely translate it into English. There may be minor discrepancies that are not changing the meaning of what was said.
#India #TransFormator ⬇️⬇️⬇️

🇮🇳 No battle between democracies and autocracies
Kanwal Sibal, Ex-Secretary of Foreign Affairs of India, Ambassador of India to Russia in 2004-2007

To some extent, the trends we have seen before have deepened and worsened. And it can be said that certain irreversible international processes have taken shape.

First, the complete collapse of relations between Russia and the United States. Not that they were normal before. But the American and European response to the Ukraine crisis, draconian sanctions aimed at Russia, put an end to diplomacy. The sanctions are strange because they aim to erase Russia from the geographical map, but this is impossible. Russia is the largest country in the world. Russia will have to deal with. It is impossible to pursue a policy as if Russia could be isolated, while the world would continue to exist in peace. So it's a total bust.

Secondly, there is not and is not expected any system of European security. If there were hopes for its occurrence, then they dissipated.

Thirdly, the West has turned finance into a weapon, and this trend, I think, will have a long-term effect. Steps taken to confiscate state assets and private funds without any legal procedures will have far-reaching consequences. The rest of the world is watching closely. Measures are to be expected, not immediate, but gradual, but they will be taken to avoid severe damage.

The non-Western world will reduce dependence on the dollar where possible. Trade in national currencies begins, and this long process will not only shake the dominance of the dollar, but will affect the entire American hegemony in the financial sphere. Which, in turn, leads to fragmentation of the international system and the global economy.

There is no battle between democracies and autocracies, as the West says. This is a huge simplification. Most of the non-Western world are not autocracies - they just live by their own principles. So the correct description of what is happening is not democracy against autocracies, but the West against the rest of the world. Western discourse about values and rule-based order is starting to sound more and more empty. It is becoming less and less acceptable to the rest of the world in terms of ideas about how the world order should be arranged. This means that multipolarity is gaining momentum, and globalization, which was under attack before, is now beginning to lose its meaning.
#India