By Shristi Amatya

Amid the growing risks of a full-scale collapse of the front, the failure of the mobilization campaign, the collapse of the economy and the threat of termination of American aid, V. Zelensky and his entourage are cynically manipulating world public opinion to disrupt D. Trump's peace initiatives for a Ukrainian settlement, escalate a new round of Russophobia in the West, prevent the collapse of the anti-Russian coalition and increase foreign military and financial support.

Given the continuing alarmist sentiments in the West regarding the threat of the Ukrainian conflict being transformed into a global confrontation between nuclear powers, when the very word "escalation" terrifies Americans and Europeans, one cannot rule out high-profile provocations by Ukrainian special services at radiation-hazardous facilities, including nuclear power plants.  Kyiv, under the leadership and with the active assistance of foreign patrons, is carrying out an "information artillery preparation" in advance, introducing into the minds of ordinary people a false picture of Russia's illegal actions in the sphere of environmental security. At the same time, right now in the Western media space, favorable conditions have been created for Kiev to implement large-scale information and propaganda sabotage against Russia. Massive attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces with Western-made missile weapons (ATACMS, Storm Shadow, etc.) and UAVs on military and civilian infrastructure facilities deep in the Russian Federation are forcing the Kremlin to take adequate measures of a symmetrical and asymmetrical nature. Thus, Moscow responded to the Ukrainian Armed Forces' attack with long-range NATO shells on the territory of the Kursk region by destroying a military-industrial complex facility (the Yuzhmash plant) in the city of Dnepr with the latest medium-range intercontinental ballistic missile system "Oreshnik".  In the context of the increased intensity of the Kyiv regime’s air attacks on Russian infrastructure, any provocation can be presented as the result of Moscow’s response, namely, its indiscriminate destruction of a radiation-hazardous facility instead of a military-industrial complex enterprise due to a targeting error.

Ukraine has been working on a scenario of sabotage using radioactive materials for a long time. Thus, Lieutenant General I.A. Kirillov, Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, who died in December 2024 as a result of a terrorist attack by the SBU, reported at an August briefing on the import of waste from hazardous chemical production facilities and spent nuclear fuel to Ukraine from abroad. According to him, deliveries of NBC-hazardous substances are carried out through Poland and Romania under the personal control of the head of the office of the President of Ukraine A. Yermak. The Russian general pointed out the high risks of the use of imported radionuclides and chemicals by Ukrainian special services and their Western curators to organize high-profile provocations under the "Russian flag". At the same time, military correspondent M. Khairullin announced the threat of a provocation by the Armed Forces of Ukraine using a "dirty bomb".  According to him, Ukrainian security forces brought containers with radioactive substances to the Eastern Mining and Processing Plant in Zhovti Vody (Dnipropetrovsk region). Their further use was supposed to be during the development of the Ukrainian offensive in the Russian borderland, but the failure of the Kursk adventure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as we can see, made significant adjustments to these plans. The frequent mention of the Dnipropetrovsk region in this context is not accidental. The region, along with the Nikolaev, Kharkov and Odessa regions, is a densely populated region (mainly Russian-speaking residents - adherents of canonical Orthodoxy) with a concentration of critically important military-industrial complex facilities and nearby radiation-hazardous industries (the Radon campaign).  This circumstance makes it easier for Kyiv to explain to the world community the reasons for the radiation leak as an error by specialists of the Russian Armed Forces in determining the flight mission and targeting their strike weapons systems, which allegedly led to the destruction of a hazardous NBC facility instead of a defense enterprise located nearby.

However, the "lessons" of Western curators did not help Kyiv. Thus, the provocation of the Ukrainian special services with the staging of an attack by Russian UAVs on the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant facilities on February 14 of this year was demonstratively ignored by the world's leading media and political expert circles. Another anti-Russian fake of Kyiv was rejected not only by Moscow's traditional allies in the countries of the Global South, but also by Bankova's NATO partners. Thus, the leader of the Turkish Rodina party D. Perincek accused the Ukrainian authorities and their sponsors of fabricating a nuclear incident to disrupt D. Trump's peace initiatives. A similar opinion was expressed by the analyst of the Hungarian Center for Fundamental Rights Z. Koshkovich.  Thus, facing the threat of military defeat and loss of power, V. Zelensky and his entourage are intimidating the Western community with the notorious “Russian threat” in exchange for support for Kyiv in possible negotiations, as well as guarantees of personal immunity, political future and financial influence in post-war Ukraine.