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Tag: nuclear
Kremlin Dismisses Mass Burial Discoveries In Ukraine As 'Lies'

Kremlin Dismisses Mass Burial Discoveries In Ukraine As 'Lies'

Kupiansk (Ukraine) (AFP) - The Kremlin on Monday denied its forces were responsible for large-scale killings in east Ukraine and accused Kyiv of fabricating its discoveries of mass graves in recaptured territory.

In the latest incident spurring fears of an atomic emergency, Ukraine said Russian rockets landed dangerously close to a nuclear power station in southern Ukraine.

Ukraine recaptured Izyum and other towns in the east this month, crippling Kremlin supply routes and bringing fresh claims of Russian atrocities with the discovery of hundreds of graves -- some containing multiple bodies.

"These are lies," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. Moscow, he said, "will stand up for the truth in this story".

Fighting in the northeast has raged and AFP journalists heard artillery exchanges in frontline Kupiansk on Monday, as traumatised civilians headed out of the town now mainly in Ukrainian hands.

The streets were strewn with broken glass, spent cartridge casings and the discarded remains of ration packs issued by both forces.

Most of the fire was outgoing, with Ukrainian tanks and artillery targeting Russian positions on the west side of the town, over a mess of broken bridges. A column of smoke rose in the distance.

At the entrance to the town, cowering from the sounds of Ukrainian tank shells passing overhead towards Russian lines, civilians gathered to hitch rides or join buses to head out into safer Ukrainian territory.

"It was impossible to stay where we were living," said 56-year-old Lyudmyla, who braved the constant crack of shells to cross the Oskil river from the disputed east bank to the relative safety of the west.

"There was incoming fire not just every day, but literally every hour. It's very tough there, on the other bank of the river."

In his address to the nation on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russians were "panicking" as his forces held recaptured territory in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

'Lost A Lot Of Blood'

Russian-backed authorities in east Ukraine said a "punitive" strike by Kyiv's forces had killed more than a dozen people and wounded more in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk.

The rebel head of the region claimed the strike was "deliberate" and said it would "not go unpunished".

A court in the neighbouring rebel-held region of Lugansk meanwhile sentenced two employees of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to 13 years on treason charges.

OSCE chairman Zbigniew Rau condemned the "unjustifiable" detention of the mission's members since the outbreak of the war, calling it "nothing but pure political theatre... inhumane and repugnant".

Ukrainian civilians in the Kharkiv region have recounted months of brutality under Russian occupation.

In Kupyansk, Mykhailo Chindey told AFP he had been tortured on suspicion of supplying targeting coordinates to Ukrainian forces.

"One person was holding my hand and another one was beating my arm with a metal stick. They were beating me up two hours almost every day," he told AFP.

"I lost consciousness at some point. I lost a lot of blood. They hit my heels, back, legs and kidneys."

Ukraine's nuclear energy agency, Energoatom, said Russia struck the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant overnight, with a "powerful explosion" just 300 metres (985 feet) from its reactors.

The strike damaged more than 100 windows at the station, but the reactors were not damaged, Energoatom said, publishing photos of glass shattered around blown-out frames.

It also released images of what it said was a two-metre-deep crater from where the missile landed. No staff were wounded, it said.

'Russia Endangers The Whole World'

Attacks around Ukrainian nuclear facilities have spurred calls from Kyiv and its Western allies to de-militarise surrounding areas.

Europe's largest atomic facility -- the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Russian-held territory in Ukraine -- has become a hot spot for concerns after tit-for-tat claims of attacks.

The Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, where the Pivdennoukrainsk plant is located, is close to the front line of a Ukrainian counter-offensive.

Russian forces have continued to shell Ukrainian-held towns near the front lines.

The UN's atomic agency deployed a monitoring team to the site in early September after new fighting.

"Russia endangers the whole world. We have to stop it before it's too late," Zelensky said early Monday.

Ukraine will be "very high on the agenda" when world leaders formally begin meeting in New York on Tuesday for the United Nations General Assembly, said the European Union's foreign policy chief.

"There are many other problems, we know, but the war in Ukraine has been sending shockwaves around the world," Josep Borrell said after meeting EU foreign ministers on the eve of the UN gathering, which Zelensky is to address by video.


Trump Reportedly Held Documents On Foreign Power's Nuclear Capacity

Trump Reportedly Held Documents On Foreign Power's Nuclear Capacity

Among the highly classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago was at least one that detailed the military defenses of a foreign nation, including its nuclear capabilities. The Washington Post is reporting that these documents were so tightly guarded that access to them could be granted only by the president and select cabinet members.

Reportedly, these documents are among the most closely held and valuable secrets the U.S. possesses. Obtaining such information can take years, or decades, and may require conducting extensive analysis, the expenditure of many millions of dollars, and even endangering the lives of numerous agents.

Not only are these documents of exceptional value, they are also acutely dangerous. Such documents are rarely, if ever, shared—not even with allies. Making such a document available to someone who should not see it could seriously destabilize whole regions, making war much more likely. Even nuclear war.

As described, these are documents are well beyond “top secret.” These are “need-to-know” documents, limited to a very small number of people at the highest level of government. Reportedly, some of these documents are so restricted that no one in the Biden administration except President Joe Biden is authorized to review them. Nonetheless, the Post reports that “such documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago, with uncertain security, more than 18 months after Trump left the White House.”

Imagine any two countries with a long history of animosity. Israel and Iraq. Pakistan and India. North and South Korea. Now imagine giving one of them all that the U.S. military knows about the defenses of their opponent—including how many nuclear weapons they have, where they’re stored, what kind of threat each poses. Or, imagine walking up to a representative from Russia or China and offering to show them everything that the United States knows about their own military.

At best, the outcome would be a hasty rearrangement of resources and weapons, negating much of the value of U.S. intelligence. At worst, the outcome could be war.

These are documents that could completely alter the balance between two rivals. Revealing such a document could also severely weaken the national security of the United States. It’s hard to imagine anything else that Donald Trump might have left lying around that represents a greater threat to the stability and well-being of the entire planet.

After previously reports suggested that documents related to nuclear weapons were among those sought at Mar-a-Lago, Trump, predictably, called the story “a hoax. just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax.”

A bipartisan Senate committee led by Republicans concluded that Trump’s campaign had over 100 contacts with Russian agents, provided information they knew was going to high levels in the Russian government, and sought more assistance from Russia. That report concluded that some of these actions “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”

So if that’s how Donald Trump defines a “hoax,” then yes, maybe this is another one. An even more grievous one.

In the detailed list of documents subpoenaed from Trump were some including the “S/FRD” sub-classification in addition to top secret. This abbreviation is “reserved for information that relates primarily to the military use of nuclear weapons.”

In addition to these documents, some were labelled “HCS,” for human intelligence. The sources for these documents will likely now have to be exfiltrated where possible, or otherwise abandoned. Simply the chance that their identities have been compromised is enough to make any future information from these sources suspect.

At the moment, any investigative action that the federal government might take related to this material has been frozen by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled on Sunday night that Trump should be granted his request for a “special master” to review all seized documents and sort out any over which he might have some form of privilege. If the ruling is not overturned on appeal, the level of classification connected to these documents makes the pool of available masters vanishingly small.

Trump has repeatedly stated—though not in court—that he has declassified all material coming to Mar-a-Lago. However, not only does this contradict both practice and law concerning how documents are classified and declassified, documents at this level are never declassified.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Don Jr.: 'It Would Probably Be Good' If Trump Kept Nuclear Codes At Mar-A-Lago

Don Jr.: 'It Would Probably Be Good' If Trump Kept Nuclear Codes At Mar-A-Lago

Donald Trump Junior suggested on Monday that the United States would be safer if his father, former President Donald Trump, had stashed "the nuclear codes" at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

The eldest Trump son shared his opinion – which resembled a stand-up comedy routine – at an event in support of Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz's reelection campaign.

"Donald Trump has the nuclear codes!! In the linen closet at Mar-a-Lago!!" Junior hollered.

"By the way, for the record, I say that if Donald Trump actually still had the nuclear codes it would probably be good," he hooted. "Our enemies – our enemies – might actually be like, 'okay, maybe, let's not mess with them.' I'm like when they look at Joe Biden then they say, 'we should attack now.'"

Watch below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Iran Declares It Will No Longer Honor 2015 Nuclear Deal

Iran Declares It Will No Longer Honor 2015 Nuclear Deal

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Responding to the assassination of top military leader Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran has now announced that it is ending all remaining limits on nuclear fuel enrichment described in the 2015 international agreement intended to preclude Iranian development of nuclear weapons.

The New York Times cites an Iranian government release: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuges. Therefore Iran’s nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion.”

Iran is not fully ending the 2015 nuclear deal; it will continue to allow IAEA inspectors in its facilities. But it will no longer agree to limit its nuclear fuel production in quantity or enrichment. This could allow, if Iran so desired, to rapidly escalate its nuclear program.

The Trump administration had already declared the multilateral 2015 nuclear deal between Iran, the United States and other nations to be null and void, imposing new economic sanctions in an attempt to force Iran into new negotiations; other signing nations have attempted to keep the 2015 agreement intact, despite continued administration threats against nations unwilling to enforce the newly demanded sanctions.