Why Putin Is Hell-Bent on Capturing Ukraine’s Nuclear Reactors

The takeover of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities is a vital part of the Kremlin’s “fear and control” strategy in the war.

Photo Illustration by Kristen Hazzard/The Daily Beast/Getty

Jeremy Kryt
Published Mar. 13, 2022 8:47PM ET

The world watched in horror as shelling by Russian forces set fire to part of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine. Immediate catastrophe was averted when the flames were put out, but the plant—which is home to six separate reactors—was captured by the Kremlin’s forces on March 4.

Russia has also taken control of the nuclear facility at Chernobyl, which although inactive, still houses deadly radioactive materials. The situation at Chernobyl took a dramatic turn for the worse on March 9 when the power supply was cut off and the electricity-dependent cooling system for spent nuclear rods was endangered. A partial outage at Zaporizhzhya followed a day later.

Ukraine is home to three additional nuclear facilities totaling nine more reactors, and some observers have theorized those are also likely to be targeted as Russia seeks to gain control over the nation’s power supply.

“The Russians will want to secure the other three Ukrainian nuclear facilities as part of this strategy,” Dr. Robert J. Bunker, research director at the security consultancy ℅ Futures LLC, told The Daily Beast. Bunker hypothesized that an “airborne assault could be utilized as an early component of a ground force offensive drive” to seize one or more of the remaining plants. If or when Russian forces are able to regain the offensive, “the three reactors at the South Ukraine facility would be the next logical target in this regard.”


A satellite image shows military vehicles alongside Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Feb. 25, 2022.
BlackSky via Reuters

So what’s behind the Russians’ obsession with Ukraine's nuclear plants?

Let’s start with Russia’s own stated reason for going after the plants, which is that Kyiv had been using material at the sites to build a thermononuclear bomb.Those charges escalated on March 9, when Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharaova told Russian media that Ukraine intended to use its alleged nuclear arsenal against Russia.

The Foreign Ministry Twitter account recorded Zakharova as saying that Russia had occupied Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya “exclusively to prevent any attempts to stage nuclear provocations, which is a risk that obviously exists.”

U.S. experts interviewed by The Daily Beast pushed back hard on those claims.

“That was a baseless invention by Moscow to justify its invasion and seizures of nuclear power plants,” said retired military intelligence officer Hal Kempfer.

Kempfer, who formerly directed a coalition task force that studied weapons of mass destruction [WMDs], accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of “creating information or ‘facts’ to fit an official narrative, no matter how fake, illogical, ridiculous, unsubstantiated or easily refuted they may be,” said Kempfer, who called the claim that Ukraine had intended to use WMDs “truly Orwellian.”

Fear is a very powerful weapon in warfare.

Bunker, a former professor at the U.S. Army War College, agreed.

“I think the Russian narrative is meant to obscure Putin's strategic objectives as well as use propaganda to make the Ukrainian defenders appear as aggressors and war criminals that must be stopped,” he said. “Also, if a radiological release or nuclear event took place the Russians might try to label it as part of a false flag Ukrainian or even NATO backed plot.”

There might not be a WMD plot afoot, but that doesn’t mean the reactors aren’t valuable targets, in particular because about 50 percent of Ukraine’s electricity is generated by nuclear power.

“There is strategic operation value in controlling energy and communication centers and choke points,” said retired Marine Colonel G.I. Wilson, whose writings originated the popular concept of Fourth Generation Warfare. “That aspect has considerable merit [for the Russians].”

According to Kempfer, part of that merit comes from the fact that such control over the electrical grid would allow the Kremlin to turn the lights off at will over vast swaths of Ukraine.

“Turning off the power nationwide—as [Russian force] have done on a smaller scale in Mariupol—in the middle of winter creates mass hardship and suffering for the Ukrainian population, and that is apparently a weapon Putin feels free to utilize,” Kempfer said.

Such a move could also have a chilling effect on the nation’s commerce.

“The industry and economy of Ukraine can’t function if 50 percent of its power generation capabilities are either controlled by Russian forces or disabled,” said Futures’ research director Bunker, who also pointed out that the reactors could serve as immense “bargaining chips” in any future ceasefire or peace negotiations.

The reactors are also positioned near major railheads that transport nuclear fuel. Those same shipping hubs could be easily repurposed by the Russians for moving armored vehicles and munitions to battlefields around Ukraine, especially since their tanks have been running short on gas.

The targeting of nuclear facilities—including the wanton shelling that set part of Zaporizhzhya ablaze and the ongoing power outages at the plants—also sends a deliberate message that this is a kind of no-holds-barred warfare in which even the risk of nuclear devastation can’t be ruled out.

“It’s a psychological weapon being used to terrorize the population,” said intelligence officer Kempfer. “They’re [targeting nuclear plants] as a way to put tremendous pressure on the Ukrainian government to capitulate. That’s their endgame.”

Kempfer also said the takeovers were a way to warn the U.S. and NATO and against their potential involvement in the conflict.

“[The Kremlin] is able to raise the specter of radioactive calamity without ever introducing nuclear weapons. Putin is a calculating guy and he realizes that we get very concerned any time a nuclear plant is threatened. The world saw Chernobyl, the world saw Fukushima, and we don’t want to see that again.”

Kempfer likened the tactic of going after Ukraine’s nuclear plants to that of Rome sewing salt into Cartheginian soil at the end of the Punic Wars, so that nothing would ever grow there. “They’re saying [...] we might irradiate a big chunk of Ukraine so it’s dead earth and you can never use it again. That’s the implied threat. That they can turn all of Ukraine into one big Chernobyl.”

Ukraine: Putin Plotting False-Flag Chernobyl Terror Attack


Taking risks that could lead to a catastrophic accident might be intended to show Russia’s disregard for the consequences of radioactive fallout, but Bunker said there could also be an even darker, more deliberate motive for going after reactors.

“If the Putin regime wants to play ‘authoritarian hardball’ it can threaten to release radiological material into the atmosphere from the Zaporizhzhia facility under its control,” Bunker said. Such a move could be used to force Kyiv to accept Russian rule or “as a deterrence measure to inhibit Ukrainian forces from retaking the facility.”

Marine Colonel Wilson called such behavior “Russian brinkmanship” designed “to give the impression of upping the ante in a very high-stakes encounter” in which “everything is targetable and nothing is safe.”

“Fear,” Wilson said, “is a very powerful weapon in warfare.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL 

In Face of US Claims, Moscow Says "There Is No 'Russian Invasion' of Ukraine"

As the Biden administration continues to warn of a "looming" attack, anti-war advocates urge diplomacy and dedication to playing "a cooperative and constructive role in this new multipolar world."


A member of the U.S. Army speaks with Stefan Zemanovic, the spokesperson for the Slovakian armed forces, on February 17, 2022 in Kuchyna, Slovakia. (Photo: Zuzana Gogova/Getty Images)


JESSICA CORBETT

TRUTH OUT

February 17, 2022

Amid global demands for urgent diplomacy to de-escalate the Ukraine crisis, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday rebuffed allegations by the Biden administration—along with other Western governments and corporate media—that Russia intends to imminently invade its neighbor.

"Rather than invoking a global order that no longer exists, the Biden administration should consider an agreement that offers a path out of this mess."

"There is no 'Russian invasion' of Ukraine, which the U.S. and its allies have been announcing officially since last fall, and it is not planned, therefore, statements about 'Russia's responsibility for escalation' can be regarded as an attempt to exert pressure and devalue Russia's proposals for security guarantees," said the ministry in its official response to a U.S. statement issued last month on Moscow's security demands, including Ukraine's exclusion from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

"We are calling on the U.S. and NATO to return to compliance with international commitments in the area of upholding peace and security," the ministry's document explains, according to the Russian news agency TASS. "We expect concrete proposals from the alliance's members about the form and substance of the legal confirmation that further eastward expansion by NATO will be abandoned."

The Russian statement, which centralizes "practical measures on de-escalation," accuses the United States of failing to provide a constructive response to Moscow's demands, adding that "this approach and the accompanying narrative by U.S. officials are reinforcing substantiated doubts that Washington is really committed to rectifying the European security situation."

"In the absence of readiness of the U.S. side to negotiate solid, legally binding guarantees of our security by the US and its allies," the document states, "Russia will have to react, including via implementation of measures of military-technical nature."

The ministry's comments came the same day U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that although "there's a clear diplomatic path" out of the crisis, he believes Russia will invade Ukraine "in the next several days."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday warned—though he provided no evidence—of "Russia's looming aggression against Ukraine" in remarks to the United Nations Security Council.

Along with repeating claims about a potential false flag operation by Russia as "​​a pretext for its attack," Blinken urged Moscow to make clear that it is not planning an invasion while also suggesting that such a statement would not be taken seriously by the U.S. administration.

As Blinken put it:
I have no doubt that the response to my remarks here today will be more dismissals from the Russian government about the United States stoking hysteria or that it has "no plans" to invade Ukraine.

So let me make this simple. The Russian government can announce today—with no qualification, equivocation, or deflection—that Russia will not invade Ukraine. State it clearly. State it plainly to the world. And then demonstrate it by sending your troops, your tanks, your planes back to their barracks and hangars and sending your diplomats to the negotiating table.

The U.S. diplomat also cast doubt on whether Russia is drawing down troops near its border with Ukraine, telling the international body that "we do not see that happening on the ground."

Various Western officials have made similar remarks since Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that "it's a partial withdrawal of troops from the areas of our exercises."

As The New York Times reports:
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that troops had redeployed hundreds of miles away from the Ukrainian border areas after conducting military exercises.

The ministry's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said that logistics units of the western military district had traveled more than 400 miles from the Kursk region, bordering Ukraine, and returned to their base in the town of Dzerzhinsk in central Russia.

Several other military groups traveled more than 900 miles by railway with their equipment and were redeployed to Chechnya and Dagestan, he said. The troops currently engaged in military exercises in Belarus, to Ukraine's north, will also return to their home bases once the drills are over, Gen. Konashenkov said in a statement.

Meanwhile, anti-war advocates around the world are imploring all parties to focus on de-escalating the conflict, particularly given the U.S. and Russia's nuclear capabilities.

The Nation's editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, argued Tuesday in her weekly column for The Washington Post that "rather than invoking a global order that no longer exists, the Biden administration should consider an agreement that offers a path out of this mess."

Vanden Heuvel, also president of the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord, laid to waste Blinken's defense of NATO's "open door" admission policy, pointing out that "Ukraine is in no position" to "contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area," as the alliance's founding treaty requires.

Further countering Blinken's recent statements, she wrote that "the post-Cold War international order—with the United States as a unipolar power—is already over," noting that earlier this month, "Russian and Chinese leaders declared in a joint communique that they seek a 'new era' and will no longer accede to the American-led order."

"Finally, those principles that Blinken invokes apparently were meant to apply only to others," she added. "After its disastrous offensive war of choice in Iraq, the United States is not exactly the exemplar of a rules-based order. The Monroe Doctrine, the sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, the Cuba embargo, and even NATO itself all mock Blinken's strictures against spheres of influence and dictating other countries' policies."



Writing Thursday for Common Dreams, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies of the anti-war group CodePink noted that while the crisis could fizzle out or Russia could invade, the Ukrainian government could also escalate "its civil war against the self-declared People's Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), provoking various possible reactions from other countries."

Their warning that "a Ukrainian government attack on the DPR or LPR could be passed off in the West as a 'false flag' provocation by Russia" came as pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian authorities on Thursday accused each other of violating a cease-fire in Ukraine's Donbas region, which has been embroiled in conflict since 2014.

Like vanden Heuvel, Benjamin and Davies also suggested that "however it ends, this crisis should be a wake-up call for Americans of all classes and political persuasions to reevaluate our country's position in the world."

Along with specifically urging a wind-down of NATO, they wrote that "we must start thinking about how a post-imperial America can play a cooperative and constructive role in this new multipolar world, working with all our neighbors to solve the very serious problems facing humanity in the 21st century."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Fox Hosts Knew—And Lied Anyway

Text messages sent to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reveal a disturbing truth.

By Adam Serwer

Daniel Constante / Alamy; Getty; Paul Spella / The Atlantic
DECEMBER 16, 2021, 1:30 PM ET
About the author: Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers politics.

According to right-wing media figures, the January 6 sacking of the Capitol that disrupted the counting of the 2020 electoral votes was “a false-flag operation.” It was just “politicians” having their “jobs disrupted for two hours.” It was “mostly peaceful.” It was a “setup,” or perhaps it was the work of “antifa,” but those who were arrested and prosecuted are definitely “political prisoners.” Whatever happened, whether it was just a few misguided tourists or an inside job, Donald Trump is certainly not to blame and should not face punishment.

Or at least that’s what these Fox News personalities have said publicly. In fact, they understood exactly what was happening and who was responsible.

As part of its investigation into the Capitol riot, Congress has released a series of text messages between then–White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Fox News personalities, exchanged on January 6. The texts show that the network’s stars, contrary to the deliberate obfuscation campaign they have since offered, were well aware of who was responsible for the attack on the Capitol, and who could have prevented it.

Trump said to his supporters at the rally that day, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” and told them to march on the Capitol in the hopes of preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden's victory. As the mob ransacked the building, the Fox host Laura Ingraham told Meadows, “The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” and warned that “this is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” The morning-show host Brian Kilmeade implored Meadows: “Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.” The prime-time host Sean Hannity urged Meadows to get Trump to “ask people to leave the Capitol.” Subsequently, all three hosts downplayed Trump’s responsibility for what happened, or sought to cast blame on others, knowingly misleading their viewers. If the rally had been peaceful, if the mob had not been full of Trump supporters, if this were an inside job, then appealing to Trump to stop it would not have made sense.

The texts provide a concrete record of what much of the right-wing media, and Fox News in particular, have since tried to obscure: A violent mob of Trump supporters, incited by falsehoods promoted by right-wing outlets and Trump himself about the election being stolen, sought to overturn the results by force. That violence was but the last desperate effort of a months-long campaign to invalidate the election results by pressuring election officials, state legislators, the Supreme Court, and ultimately former Vice President Mike Pence to use their power to install Trump as president against the will of the electorate.

The messages also highlight Fox News’s unusual relationship with its audience, which involves the conservative media’s most trusted figures consciously lying to their viewers. The texts between Meadows and the Fox News hosts are hardly the only example of the network’s personalities deliberately misleading their audience: From downplaying the deadliness of COVID to making misleading assertions about the effectiveness of the vaccines, to advancing the false claims of voter fraud that helped motivate the riot in the first place, Fox and its satellites have shown little hesitation in exploiting the confidence of conservative viewers who are convinced that the network is one of the few trustworthy outlets in a media landscape they regard with fierce hostility.

The roots of that hostility are worth reflecting on in light of these revelations. Fox News presents itself as a necessary counterweight to the supposed left-wing bias of other media outlets. Its defenders argue that the mainstream media have made so many glaring mistakes, the press can no longer be trusted, and it is therefore natural for Americans to seek alternatives.

The press does make mistakes, sometimes very serious ones—the coverage of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq is a prominent example. Developing stories are often subject to revision as new facts are uncovered, which to some audiences can feel like evidence of carelessness, negligence, or bias. Although the criticism the media face under such circumstances is often harsh, a healthy public skepticism of the press is as important to democracy as a thriving press.

But even errors of fact and framing, ideology or analysis, are different from what Fox News hosts do, which is attempt to get their viewers to believe things they themselves know are false. Fox News is distinct not only from most other broadcasters, but also from conservative magazines and websites whose writers are right-wing but maintain a sense of intellectual independence. Fox News’s symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party makes the outlet roughly as reliable as most politicians, who are more inclined to tell voters what they think they want to hear than what they ought to know.

It’s common to say that conservatives distrust the media, but conservative viewers trust Fox about as much as Democrats trust CNN. The fact that its most popular personalities consciously lie to their audiences has not diminished that trust; it has made Fox the most successful cable-news channel. It is difficult then, to argue that inaccuracy is what has eroded other outlets’ trust with conservatives—the reverse is true. More factual coverage would not strengthen Fox News’s bond with its viewers; it would likely drive them elsewhere. The outlet shapes this demand, but it also bends to it.

A conservative news outlet that sought to compete on accuracy would maintain standards of rigor that would not allow its most famous ambassadors to knowingly lie to their viewers, or it would sanction them for doing so. But Fox News understands that its success depends on maintaining a fantasy world, rather than doing anything to disturb it. This is why some of its most marquee personalities, who shared the same horror as most other Americans at the events of January 6, caked on their makeup, stared into the camera, and lied to the people who trust them the most. What makes Fox News unique is not that it is conservative, but that its on-air personalities understand that telling lies is their job. Their texts on January 6, and their conduct since, leave no other conclusion.

WAIT, WHAT?!

PM's outreach to Putin prevented 'potential nuclear attack' on Ukraine: Report

The report claimed that intervention from PM Modi and countries like China may have made Russian President Vladimir Putin drop his plan of hitting Ukraine with a nuclear missile in 2022. 

THE ARYAN BROTHERHOOD

In September 2022, PM Modi told Putin that "this is not the era of war" during the SCO summit in Uzbekistan. (File photo: Reuters)

India Today World Desk

New Delhi,UPDATED: Mar 11, 2024

Written By: Sahil Sinha

In Short

• PM Modi's outreach to Putin helped avert nuclear attack on Ukraine
• The revelation was done in a report published by CNN
• US sought support from non-allies, including India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's outreach, coupled with diplomatic efforts from various countries, played a pivotal role in preventing Russia from a "potential nuclear attack" on Ukraine, a CNN report said on Saturday.

As per the report, which cited two senior officials, the United States had been "preparing rigorously" for a potential nuclear strike by Russia on Ukraine when President Vladimir Putin's army was facing 'one setback after another' on the battlefield.

The report citing US officials claimed that intervention from PM Modi and countries like China may have made Putin drop his plan of hitting Ukraine with a nuclear missile in 2022.

"US officials say that outreach and public statements from Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped avert a crisis," the CNN report stated.

The report revealed that as Ukrainian forces closed in on Kherson, entire Russian units faced the risk of being surrounded.

Simultaneously, Moscow allegedly asserted that Ukraine might resort to using a dirty bomb. Within the US administration, the perception emerged that a devastating loss at Kherson could serve as a "potential trigger" for Russia to deploy nuclear weapons, and the dirty bomb claim might be a cover for such an attack, the report said.

To avert the crisis, the US sought support from non-allies, including India, to discourage Russia from taking such drastic measures.

"One of the things we did was not only message them directly but strongly urge, press, encourage other countries, to whom they might be more attentive, to do the same thing," a senior US administration official told CNN.

"I think the fact that we know, India weighed in, China weighed in, others weighed in, may have had some effect on their thinking," the official said.

Notably, India has consistently condemned civilian killings and advocated for a peaceful resolution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

In September 2022, PM Modi told Putin that "this is not the era of war" during the SCO summit in Uzbekistan, expressing a commitment to exploring paths towards peace.

Exclusive: US prepared ‘rigorously’ for potential Russian nuclear strike in Ukraine in late 2022, officials say

By Jim Sciutto, CNN
Sat March 9, 2024

CNN —

In late 2022, the US began “preparing rigorously” for Russia potentially striking Ukraine with a nuclear weapon, in what would have been the first nuclear attack in war since the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly eighty years before, two senior administration officials told CNN.

The Biden administration was specifically concerned Russia might use a tactical or battlefield nuclear weapon, the officials said.

I first reported US officials were worried about Russia using a tactical nuclear weapon in 2022, but in my new book, “The Return of Great Powers” publishing on March 12, I reveal exclusive details on the unprecedented level of contingency planning carried out as senior members of the Biden administration became increasingly alarmed by the situation.


“The Return of Great Powers" publishes March 12. From Penguin Random House

“That’s what the conflict presented us, and so we believed ­and I think it’s our right ­to prepare rigorously and do everything possible to avoid that happening,” the first senior administration official told me.

What led the Biden administration to reach such a startling assessment was not one indicator, but a collection of developments, analysis, and – crucially ­- highly sensitive new intelligence.

The administration’s fear, a second senior administration official told me, “was not just ­hypothetical —​­ it was also based on some information that we picked up.”

“We had to plan so that we were in the best possible position in case this no‑longer unthinkable event actually took place,” the same senior administration official told me.

During this period from late summer to fall 2022, the National Security Council convened a series of meetings to put contingency plans in place “in the event of either a very clear indication that they were about to do something, attack with a nuclear weapon, or if they just did, how we would respond, how we would try to preempt it, or deter it,” the first senior administration official told me.

“I don’t think many of us coming into our jobs expected to be spending significant amounts of time preparing for a scenario which a few years ago was believed to be from a bygone era,” this senior administration official told me.

Russians surrounded

Late summer 2022 was proving a devastating period for Russian forces in Ukraine. Ukrainian forces were advancing on Russian-occupied Kherson in the south. The city had been Russia’s biggest prize since the invasion. Now, it was in danger of being lost to the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Crucially, as Ukrainian forces advanced, entire Russian units were in danger of being surrounded. The view inside the administration was that such a catastrophic loss could be a “potential trigger” for the use of nuclear weapons.

A member of the Ukrainian military, 59th Brigade, waits to take on new supplies before moving to a new position in November 2022 in Kherson, Ukraine. Chris McGrath/Getty Images/File

“If significant numbers of Russian forces were ­overrun —​­ if their lives were shattered as such —​­ that was a sort of precursor to a potential threat directly to Russian territory or the Russian state,” the first senior administration official said.

“In Kherson at that time there were increasing signs that Russian lines could collapse. Tens of thousands of Russian troops were potentially vulnerable.”

Russia was losing ground inside Ukrainian sovereign territory, not inside Russia. But US officials were concerned that Russian President Vladimir Putin saw it differently. He had told the Russian people that Kherson was now part of Russia itself, and, so, might perceive a devastating loss there as a direct threat to him and the Russian state.

“Our assessment had been for some time that one of the scenarios in which they would contemplate using nuclear weapons [included] things like existential threats to the Russian state, direct threats to Russian territory,” the first senior administration official said.

In such an assessment, Russia could view a tactical nuclear strike as a deterrent against further losses of Russian-​held territory in Ukraine as well as any potential attack on Russia itself.

False Flag

At the same time, Russia’s propaganda machine was circulating a new false flag story about a Ukrainian dirty bomb, which US officials feared could be intended as cover for a Russian nuclear attack.

In October 2022, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, made a series of phone calls to defense officials in the US, the UK, France and Turkey, telling them that the Kremlin was “concerned about possible provocations by Kyiv involving the use of a dirty bomb.”

US and other western officials rejected the Russian warnings. Still, Russia’s UN ambassador delivered a letter directly to the United Nations detailing the same alleged threat. Russian officials alleged Ukraine would build and detonate a dirty bomb against Russian forces and then blame the attack on Russia.

US officials dismissed the Russian warnings but feared the motivation behind them. “Russian public messaging came way out of the left field on the potential for Ukraine to use a dirty bomb, which we saw not grounded in reality,” the first senior administration official told me. “More concerning” to this official was that the Russians would say these things “either as a pretext for them to do something crazy or as a cover for something they themselves were looking at doing. So that was quite alarming.”

But there was one more piece that raised such concerns to a new level. Western intelligence agencies had received information that there were now communications among Russian officials explicitly discussing a nuclear strike.

As the first senior administration official described it to me, there were “indications that we were picking up through other means that this was at least something that lower levels of the Russian system were discussing.”

US access to Russian internal communications had proved capable before. In the run‑up to the Ukraine invasion, the US had intercepted Russian military commanders discussing preparations for the invasion, communications that formed part of the US intelligence assessment, later proved accurate, that an invasion was imminent.

“It’s never a cut-and-​dry, black-​and-​white assessment,” the first senior administration official told me. “But the risk level seemed to be going up, beyond where it had been at any other point in time.”

Would the US know?

At no time did the US detect intelligence indicating Russia was taking steps to mobilize its nuclear forces to carry out such an attack.

“We obviously placed a high priority on tracking and had some ability at least to track such movements of its nuclear forces,” this senior administration official told me. “And at no point did we ever see any indications of types of steps that we would’ve expected them to take if they were going down a path toward using nuclear weapons.”

A dud warhead imitating a nuclear part of a Kh-55SM strategic cruise missile, which was used by Russian troops during missile attacks on Ukraine, is seen during a media briefing in Kyiv, Ukraine, in December 2022. 

NurPhoto/Getty Images

However, US officials were not certain they would know if Russia was moving tactical nuclear weapons into place. Unlike strategic nuclear weapons, capable of destroying entire cities, tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons are small enough to be moved quietly and could be fired from conventional systems already deployed to the Ukrainian battlefield.

“If what they were going to do is use a tactical nuclear weapon, particularly a very low-​yield tactical nuclear weapon and particularly if they were only going to use one or a very small number, it was not one hundred percent clear to us that we necessarily would have known,” this senior administration official continued.

Multiple senior administration officials took part in an urgent outreach. Secretary of State Antony Blinken communicated US concerns “very directly” with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, according to senior administration officials. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley called his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces. According to a senior US official, President Joe Biden sent CIA Director Bill Burns to speak to Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, in Turkey to communicate US concerns about a nuclear strike taking place and gauge Russian intentions.

The US also worked closely with its allies both to develop contingency plans for a Russian nuclear attack and to communicate warnings to the Russian side about the consequences of such a strike.

“We conducted a number of quiet conversations with core allies to go through our thinking,” the first senior administration official told me. “That’s a hallmark of our entire approach—​­ that we are better and stronger doing this stuff when we’re totally aligned with our allies.”

India and China

In addition, the US sought to enlist the help of non-allies, in particular China and India, to discourage Russia from such an attack.

“One of the things we did was not only message them directly, but strongly urge, press, encourage other countries, to whom they might be more attentive, to do the same thing,” the second senior administration official told me.

US officials say that outreach and public statements from Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped avert a crisis.

“I think we believe showing the international community the concern about this, particularly the concern from key countries for Russia and the Global South, was also a helpful, persuasive factor and showed them what the cost of all this could be,” the first senior administration official said.

China's President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin pose for a photo on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization leaders' summit in Samarkand in September 2022.

 Alexandr Demyanchuk/Pool/Sputnik/Getty Images

“I think the fact that we know China weighed in, India weighed in, others weighed in, may have had some effect on their thinking,” the second senior administration official told me. “I can’t demonstrate this positively, but I think that’s our assessment.”

In the time since the nuclear scare of late 2022, I have asked US and European officials if they have identified any similar threats. The danger diminished as the war entered a period of relative stalemate in the east. However, the US and its allies remain vigilant.

“We have been less concerned about the imminent prospect since that period, but it’s not something that is ever far from our minds,” a senior US official told me. “We continue to refine plans, ­and … it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that we could be confronting at least the rising risk of this again in the months ahead.”

In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, fake fact-checks are being used to spread disinformation

Context
2022-03-13
By Craig Silverman And Jeff Kao, Propublica, for NiemanLab

Researchers at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub and ProPublica identified more than a dozen videos that purport to debunk apparently nonexistent Ukrainian fakes.

On March 3, Daniil Bezsonov, an official with the pro-Russian separatist region of Ukraine that styles itself as the Donetsk People’s Republic, tweeted a video that he said revealed “How Ukrainian fakes are made.”

The clip showed two juxtaposed videos of a huge explosion in an urban area. Russian-language captions claimed that one video had been circulated by Ukrainian propagandists who said it showed a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.

But, as captions in the second video explained, the footage actually showed a deadly arms depot explosion in the same area back in 2017. The message was clear: Don’t trust footage of supposed Russian missile strikes. Ukrainians are spreading lies about what’s really going on, and pro-Russian groups are debunking them. (Bezsonov did not respond to questions from ProPublica.)



Stills from a Russian-language video that falsely claims to fact-check Ukrainian disinformation. There’s no evidence the video was created by Ukrainian media or circulated anywhere, but the label at the top says the video is a “New Fake from Ukrainian media.” The central caption inaccurately labels the footage as “Kharkiv is again under attack by the occupants!” falsely attributing the claim to Ukrainian media. The lower caption correctly identifies the event as “Fire at the ammunition depot, the city of Balakliya, 2017.” (Screenshot taken by ProPublica.)

It seemed like yet another example of useful wartime fact-checking, except for one problem: There’s little to no evidence that the video claiming the explosion was a missile strike ever circulated. Instead, the debunking video itself appears to be part of a novel and disturbing campaign that spreads disinformation by disguising it as fact-checking.

Researchers at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub and ProPublica identified more than a dozen videos that purport to debunk apparently nonexistent Ukrainian fakes. The videos have racked up more than 1 million views across pro-Russian channels on the messaging app Telegram, and have garnered thousands of likes and retweets on Twitter. A screenshot from one of the fake debunking videos was broadcast on Russian state TV, while another was spread by an official Russian government Twitter account.

The goal of the videos is to inject a sense of doubt among Russian-language audiences as they encounter real images of wrecked Russian military vehicles and the destruction caused by missile and artillery strikes in Ukraine, according to Patrick Warren, an associate professor at Clemson who co-leads the Media Forensics Hub.

“The reason that it’s so effective is because you don’t actually have to convince someone that it’s true. It’s sufficient to make people uncertain as to what they should trust,” said Warren, who has conducted extensive research into Russian internet trolling and disinformation campaigns. “In a sense they are convincing the viewer that it would be possible for a Ukrainian propaganda bureau to do this sort of thing.”

Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine unleashed a torrent of false and misleading information from both sides of the conflict. Viral social media posts claiming to show video of a Ukrainian fighter pilot who shot down six Russian planes — the so-called “Ghost of Kyiv” — were actually drawn from a video game. Ukrainian government officials said 13 border patrol officers guarding an island in the Black Sea were killed by Russian forces after unleashing a defiant obscenity, only to acknowledge a few days later that the soldiers were alive and had been captured by Russian forces.

For its part, the Russian government is loath to admit such mistakes, and it launched a propaganda campaign before the conflict even began. It refuses to use the word “invasion” to describe its use of more than 100,000 troops to enter and occupy territory in a neighboring country, and it is helping spread a baseless conspiracy theory about bioweapons in Ukraine. Russian officials executed a media crackdown culminating in a new law that forbids outlets in the country from publishing anything that deviates from the official stance on the war, while blocking Russians’ access to Facebook and the BBC, among other outlets and platforms.

Media outlets around the world have responded to the onslaught of lies and misinformation by fact-checking and debunking content and claims. The fake fact-check videos capitalize on these efforts to give Russian-speaking viewers the idea that Ukrainians are widely and deliberately circulating false claims about Russian airstrikes and military losses. Transforming debunking into disinformation is a relatively new tactic, one that has not been previously documented during the current conflict.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen what I might call a disinformation false-flag operation,” Warren said. “It’s like Russians actually pretending to be Ukrainians spreading disinformation.”



Stills from a Russian-language video that falsely claims to fact-check Ukrainian disinformation. There’s no evidence the video was created by Ukrainian media or circulated anywhere, but the label at the top says the video is “Fake Ukrainian media.” The captions on the left inaccurately label the footage as “A shopping center in Kyiv caught on fire after being hit by a Russian rocket,” falsely attributing the claim to Ukrainian media. The caption on the right correctly identifies the event as “Fire in Pervomais’k from 2021.” (Screenshot taken by ProPublica.)

The videos combine with propaganda on Russian state TV to convince Russians that the “special operation” in Ukraine is proceeding well, and that claims of setbacks or air strikes on civilian areas are a Ukrainian disinformation campaign to undermine Russian confidence.

It’s unclear who is creating the videos, or if they come from a single source or many. They have circulated for roughly two weeks, first appearing a few days after Russia invaded. The first video Warren spotted claimed that a Ukrainian flag was removed from old footage of a military vehicle and replaced with a Z, a now-iconic insignia painted on Russian vehicles participating in the invasion. But when he went looking for examples of people sharing the misleading footage with the Z logo, he came up empty.

“I’ve been following [images and videos of the war] pretty carefully in the Telegram feeds, and I had never seen the video they were claiming was a propaganda video, anywhere,” he said. “And so I started digging a little more.”

Warren unearthed other fake fact-checking videos. One purported to debunk false footage of explosions in Kyiv, while others claimed to reveal that Ukrainians were circulating old videos of unrelated explosions and mislabeling them as recent. Some of the videos claim to debunk efforts by Ukrainians to falsely label military vehicles as belonging to the Russian military.

“It’s very clear that this is targeted at Russian-speaking audiences. They’re trying to make people think that when you see destroyed Russian military hardware, you should be suspicious of that,” Warren said.

There’s no question that older footage of military vehicles and explosions have circulated with false or misleading claims that connect them to Ukraine. But in the videos identified by Warren, the allegedly Ukrainian-created disinformation does not appear to have circulated prior to Russian-language debunkings.

Searches for examples of the misleading videos came up empty across social media and elsewhere. Tellingly, none of the supposed debunking videos cite a single example of the Ukrainian fakes being shared on social media or elsewhere. Examination of the metadata of two videos found on Telegram appears to provide an explanation for that absence: Whoever created these videos simply duplicated the original footage to create the alleged Ukrainian fake.

A digital video file contains embedded data, called metadata, that indicates when it was created, what editing software was used and the names of clips used to create a final video, among other information. Two Russian-language debunking videos contain metadata that shows they were created using the same video file twice — once to show the original footage, and once to falsely claim it circulated as Ukrainian disinformation. Whoever created the video added different captions or visual elements to fabricate the Ukrainian version.

“If these videos were what they purport to be, they would be a combination of two separate video files, a ‘Ukrainian fake’ and the original footage,” said Darren Linvill, an associate professor at Clemson who co-leads the Media Forensics Hub with Warren. “The metadata we located for some videos clearly shows that they were created by duplicating a single video file and then editing it. Whoever crafted the debunking video created the fake and debunked it at the same time.”

The Media Forensics Hub and ProPublica ran tests to confirm that a video created using two copies of the same footage will cause the file name to appear twice in the video’s metadata.

Joan Donovan, the research director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, called the videos “low-grade information warfare.” She said they don’t need to spread widely on social media to be effective, since their existence can be cited by major Russian media sources as evidence of Ukraine’s online disinformation campaign.

“It works in conjunction with state TV in the sense that you can put something like this online and then rerun it on TV as if it’s an example of what’s happening online,” she said.

That’s exactly what happened on March 1, when state-controlled Channel One aired a screenshot taken from one of the videos identified by Warren. The image was shown during a morning news program as a warning to “inexperienced viewers” who might be fooled by false images of Ukrainian forces destroying Russian military vehicles, according to a BBC News report.

“Footage continues to be circulated on the internet which cannot be described as anything but fake,” the BBC quoted a Channel One presenter telling the audience.



Stills from a Russian-language video that falsely claims to fact-check Ukrainian disinformation. There’s no evidence the video was created by Ukrainian media or circulated anywhere, but the label at the top says the video is a “Ukrainian edit.” The top caption inaccurately labels the footage as “Ukrainians captured Russian equipment.” The lower caption correctly identifies the event as “Video of Ukrainian equipment 2019.” (Screenshot taken by ProPublica.)

Another video that circulated on Russian nationalist Telegram channels such as @rlz_the_kraken, which has more than 200,000 subscribers, claimed to show that fake explosions were added to footage of buildings in Kyiv. The explosions and smoke were clearly fabricated, and the video claims they were added by Ukrainians.

Stills from a Russian-language video that falsely claims to fact-check Ukrainian disinformation. There’s no evidence the video was created by Ukrainian media or circulated anywhere, but the label in the middle of the images says “New Fake from Ukraine.” The caption at the top says “Urgent!” and inaccurately labels the footage as “Kyiv was attacked by the Russian army!” while falsely attributing the claim to Ukrainian media. The lower caption correctly identifies the image as “Kyiv 2017.” (Screenshot taken by ProPublica.)

But as with the other fake debunking videos, reverse image searches didn’t turn up any examples of the supposedly manipulated video being shared online. The metadata associated with the video file indicates that it may have been manipulated to add sound and other effects using ​​Microsoft Game DVR, a piece of software that records clips from video games.

The fake debunking videos have predominantly spread on Russian-language Telegram channels with names like @FAKEcemetary. In recent days they made the leap to other languages and platforms. One video is the subject of a Reddit thread where people debated the veracity of the footage. On Twitter, they are being spread by people who support Russia, and who present the videos as examples of Ukrainian disinformation.

Francesca Totolo, an Italian writer and supporter of the neo-fascist CasaPound party, recently tweeted the video claiming that a Ukrainian flag had been removed from a military vehicle and replaced with a Russian Z.

“Now wars are also fought in the media and on social networks,” she said.

By Craig Silverman And Jeff Kao, Propublica, for NiemanLab

Craig Silverman is a reporter and Jeff Kao is a computational journalist at ProPublica, where this article first appeared.

MONTY PYTHON MEETS TUCKER CARLSON
Russian State TV Is So Ridiculous Right Now It Looks Like a Farce

Julia Davis
Sun, February 20, 2022

Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images

Anyone watching nothing but Russian state television would never know President Putin has massed his troops on the border of Ukraine, that Kremlin-controlled separatists shelled a kindergarten full of children and Russian forces are in position for an offensive against its beleaguered neighbor. On Kremlin-funded networks, the vision of events is presented not only upside down, but backwards. Panicked pundits blame the United States and Ukraine for the escalation, claim that Russia doesn’t want the war and theatrically ponder: “Why won’t somebody stop Biden?”

Chairman of the International Committee of Russia’s State Duma, Leonid Slutsky alleged that the president of the United States is painting “an absolutely inverted picture of the situation around Ukraine” and accused Joe Biden of misrepresenting “the alleged readiness of the Russian Federation to invade Ukraine.” Slutsky added that “the American president, talking about the “villain-Russia,” the very Russia that today accepts and saves the civilian population of the LPR and DPR, seems like a real character from [Lewis Carroll’s topsy-turvy children’s book] Through the Looking-Glass.”

And yet, it is Russia who has turned white into black, and black into white. If there were not so many lives hanging in the balance, you would describe current Russian state TV as a darkly comic farce.


Mysterious ‘Z’ Painted on Russian Tanks Closing in on Ukraine Border

Events on the ground are unfolding just as the American president had warned, based on the information provided by U.S. intelligence agencies. U.S. Ambassador to the OSCE Michael Carpenter said that according to U.S. assessments, Russia has placed somewhere between 169,000 and 190,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders—up from 100,000 at the end of January.

Having massed its troops and armaments on the Ukrainian border, Russia stands ready to invade Ukraine. On Friday, Kremlin-controlled heads of the self-proclaimed “republics” in Eastern Ukraine (LPR and DPR) started unprovoked evacuations of civilians to Russia, followed by suspicious explosions in the region. Russia’s state media immediately—and baselessly—blamed the Ukrainian military. State TV channel Rossiya-24 reported: “Let’s address the emergency event that took place several minutes ago.” The correspondent present on the scene said, “Everyone is trying to figure out what happened here.” The headline read: “The Ukrainian army struck the gas pipeline in Luhansk.”

What makes this all the more bizarre is that the U.S. had publicly predicted these very tactics.

Just as the U.S. administration had warned, Russian authorities now appear to be readying themselves for the re-invasion of Ukraine under false pretexts. One of the main pretexts aggressively promoted by the Kremlin and Russia’s state media is the unfounded allegation of “genocide” of Russian speakers by the Ukrainian military. Back in December of 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed: “What is happening in Donbas right how we know and see very well, it’s very reminiscent of genocide.” By February, the state media and Russian officials went full bore with their accusations of “genocide” in Ukraine.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Russian officials circulated a document at the UN Security Council meeting on Thursday, accusing the Ukrainian government of the “genocide of the Russian-speaking population of Donbas.”

Speaking before that UN Security Council meeting, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that according to the information obtained by the U.S. intelligence agencies, Russia was planning to use a false flag attack in Eastern Ukraine, followed by baseless accusations of “genocide” in the region. Blinken pointed out: "Russia may describe this event as ethnic cleansing or a genocide, making a mockery of a concept that we in this chamber do not take lightly, nor do I take lightly, based on my family history."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's dismissal of Moscow's assertion of “genocide” in the eastern Ukraine’s region of Donbas enraged Russian officials. On Saturday, Russian Foreign Ministry scolded Scholz and Germany as a whole: “It is not for German leaders to laugh at the issues of genocide. This is unacceptable, given the historical experience of Germany in matters of massacres against people and the spread of misanthropic ideology.” Russian state TV went even further, with the host of 60 Minutes Olga Skabeeva cynically asserting: “Germans have different ideas about genocide. They’ll have to start burning people in ovens, and maybe then they’ll concede: ‘Yes, it’s genocide.’”

Russia’s state media is spreading claims of Ukraine allegedly shelling the regions of Donbas and on Saturday alleged that the Ukrainians shelled Russia’s Rostov Region, located near the border with Ukraine. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Lieutenant General Valery Zaluzhny, denied all of Russia’s accusations, stating in part: “It should be noted that the artillery units of the Joint Forces are located in areas of withdrawal at a distance of more than 21 km from the line of contact, which exceeds the maximum firing range of multiple rocket launchers "Hail" and 122-mm guns in service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine."

Anticipating false accusations from the Kremlin, Ukrainian authorities allowed access to a number of local and international journalists. NBC’s Richard Engel noted: “The separatists are claiming Ukrainians are attacking and besieging them. I’ve walked up and down those trenches for the last several months. Saw no signs of ongoing or impending Ukrainian offensive. None.” Meanwhile, streams of state media news reports claim that Ukraine is aggressively shelling Donbas, alleging “the most intensive bombardments by the Ukrainian military in recent months.”

In a bizarro world of Russia’s state media, America—which has been painstakingly attempting to prevent an escalation—is the true aggressor. Appearing on 60 Minutes on Friday, lawmaker Oleg Morozov lamented: “I’m hoping there are people next to Biden, next to Scholz, next to the British PM, who will look at the scenarios and say, ‘If the big war with Russia’s participation were to start, it will cost Europe dearly. Think about that!’ That is my last hope, that the fear of this unpredictable situation will stop these hotheads.”

Igor Korotchenko, a member of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Public Council and editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, exclaimed: “The United States want this war. Their main goal is to take over Europe’s energy market. Biden could care less about the victims and their suffering, about Europe’s losses. He is realizing the plans of the American establishment.” Summarizing the grotesque new theme in the Kremlin’s war on truth, Korotchenko theatrically pleaded with European leaders: “Stop Zelensky! Stop Biden!”

People Are Being Arrested For Arson, But No, They're Not Antifa

As authorities on the West Coast battle ferocious wildfires, they're also having to contend with unfounded conspiracy theories tying the blazes not to climate change, but left-wing agitators.

Julia ReinsteinBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on September 15, 2020

Rob Schumacher / Getty Images



The melted sign of the Oak Park Motel destroyed by flames in Gates, east of Salem, Oregon, on Sept. 13.


As massive blazes continue to burn across Oregon and other parts of the West Coast, police in Portland arrested a man early Monday for allegedly lighting at least seven small fires in the city.


Authorities said Domingo Lopez Jr., 45, lit a series of small brush fires next to a freeway by using, at least in one instance, a plastic bottle with a wick attached, described by police as a Molotov cocktail. He was arrested Sunday afternoon for lighting one fire and then released, only to be arrested again hours later after he allegedly lit six more, police said in a statement. Firefighters extinguished three of the blazes, while good Samaritans put out the other three. Lopez was taken to a hospital for a mental health evaluation.


That might have been the end of it, except that news of Lopez’s arrest went viral on Twitter, with many sharing the police's post in a bid to falsely tie all the West Coast fires to agitators instead of climate change — part of a trend of right-wing misinformation about the blazes that has become a giant, politically charged distraction for local authorities who are already overmatched by the most ferocious fire season in history.

Arson arrests during fire season are nothing new. Some involve people with mental illness or pyromaniac compulsions, others are people being careless, say, at a gender reveal. But with the US election firmly underway, incidents like the one involving Lopez have been swept up in a wave of right-wing online conspiracy theories designed at discrediting climate change scientists and playing into President Trump’s message about a breakdown of law and order in Democratic-leaning states.

Most notably, people have falsely claimed some of the fires were arson attacks committed by antifa, a loosely defined group of left-wing, anti-fascist activists that Trump has called a "terrorist organization." This fear-mongering — particularly in Oregon, which has been the site of deadly clashes between right- and left-wing demonstrators in recent months — has even led some residents to vow to defy evacuation orders and remain in their burning towns in order to "defend" them from the purported arsonists. The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office has even had to remove checkpoints set up by residents who had been forcing cars to stop. Photographers and journalists have been accused of being arsonists and looters, and have been threatened and even held at gunpoint as a result.

Amid the swirling falsehoods, the FBI has had to intervene, releasing a statement on Friday making clear that reports of "extremists" being behind the fires had been investigated and were found to be untrue. "Conspiracy theories and misinformation take valuable resources away [from] local fire and police agencies working around the clock to bring these fires under control," the FBI's Portland division said.



Matthew McFarland / Unified Fire Authority via AP



Fire crews prepare to fight wildfires near Butte Falls in Southern Oregon on Saturday.


The misinformation appears to be part of a global trend in which climate change deniers have scapegoated arsonists — and not a warming planet — as the cause of blazes from Oregon to Australia. During the fires across large swaths of eastern Australia in January, prominent right-wing social media figures elevated the false claim that nearly 200 people had been arrested for intentionally starting the blazes. Some conspiracy theories have even gone as far as to baselessly accuse climate change activists of igniting the flames as a sort of false flag. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro blamed Leonardo DiCaprio and environmental NGOs for starting fires in the Amazon last year.

To be sure, arsonists do exist, driven by criminal intention, compulsion, or both. In 2017, there were more than 40,000 arson cases reported in the US, according to the FBI, and 256 arson-related arrests were made in Oregon in 2018 — but these cover all types of arson. Outside fires being lit by people, intentionally or not, are nonetheless still common across the US. The National Fire Protection Association has estimated there were almost 200,000 fires lit outside (i.e., not in structures or vehicles) between 2010 and 2014.


But while wildfires are common this time of year on the West Coast, arson is not a leading cause of these massive blazes, according to Erica Fleishman, an Oregon State University professor and director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute. These fires are instead caused by a number of combined factors, Fleishman told BuzzFeed News, particularly climate change, weather, and an increase in human settlements near areas at risk of wildfires.

"There is virtually no evidence that 'antifa' caused the wildfires currently burning in Oregon," Fleishman said. "The FBI has referenced these rumors as 'untrue.' Local law enforcement offices throughout Oregon are stating that the rumors are false. Even in the cases of fires in which arson is suspected, there are no credible links to antifa or other extremist groups."

There are a few main reasons people commit arson, Robert Schaal, a fire investigator and past president of the International Association of Arson Investigators, told BuzzFeed News. "The number one reason is financial motive," Schaal said. "A lot of people are in financial distress, and it's an easy way out to get the insurance proceeds. Another primary motive is spite or revenge — somebody is angry at a competitor, an individual, a spited lover."

Political reasons, however, are not a typical cause of wildfires, he said. "You do see arson as a tool in civil unrest, but that's not a routine occurrence," Schaal added. Intentional fires have been set during some recent protests in urban areas, he noted, but those have been aimed at businesses and institutions, such as the burning of a Nashville courthouse during a Black Lives Matter protest in May.



Matthew McFarland / Unified Fire Authority via AP



A fire crew member on the scene working to protect the town of Butte Falls in southern Oregon on Sunday.


The arson charge in Portland early Monday morning was one of at least five arrests for arson in recent days to catch the attention of right-wing conspiracy theorists. But in all the cases, authorities have not said the individuals were affiliated with "antifa" or that they had any political motives.

On Friday, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office announced an arrest had been made for a fire intentionally set in Phoenix, Oregon. Michael Jarrod Bakkela, 41, was described as a "local transient," and was booked into jail for violating his probation, which he was on for a previous methamphetamine possession conviction. He has been charged with 15 counts of criminal mischief and 14 counts of reckless endangerment. Bakkela is accused of starting one of two fires that merged to become the Almeda fire, Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office spokesperson Rich Tyler told the Oregonian.

A day before Bakkela's arrest was made, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office issued a warning about unfounded rumors about the fires and urged people to stop spreading "misinformation based on some unverified random post or meme" and stick to official sources for information.


"We are inundated with questions about things that are FAKE stories," the sheriff's office said in a Facebook post. "One example is a story circulating that varies about what group is involved as to setting fires and arrests being made. THIS IS NOT TRUE!"

Anita Esquivel, 37, was also arrested for starting fires in Salinas, California, on Sept. 7, jail records show. The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office told KION there was no indication that she has any ties to “antifa.”

In Oregon's Clackamas County, two individuals were arrested Friday on arson charges. According to the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office, 37-year-old Ignat Shchetinin confessed to lighting clothes on fire at a local Fred Meyer store using a lighter, saying he did it "to get the attention of a person who wouldn’t speak with him." Shchetinin allegedly had methamphetamine on him at the time of his arrest and was booked into jail.

Sammy Piatt, 53, was arrested by the Oregon City Police Department for allegedly lighting a pile of leaves on fire near a local social services building. Piatt is homeless, police said, and was arrested for both arson and a probation violation. The fire was quickly extinguished and did not cause damage, police said.

Officials in Clackamas County have also had to push back on antifa rumors not just from the public, but also from their own law enforcement officers.

On Saturday, a deputy in the sheriff's office was placed on administrative leave after a video went viral in which he gave credence to the conspiracy theories and said "we need the public's help on this." The deputy was aware he was being filmed at the time.


"Antifa motherfuckers are out causing hell and there's a lot of lives at stake and there’s a lot of people’s property at stake because these guys got some vendetta," said the deputy.

Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said the deputy was placed on leave as soon as Roberts became aware of the video.

"The Sheriff's Office mission is to provide calm and safety especially during unprecedented times such as these," Roberts said. "I expect nothing less of our deputies, and apologize to all in our community.”

Ukraine-Russia: What is Transnistria and why have there been attacks on the self-declared republic within Moldova?

It was a public holiday in Moldova to celebrate Orthodox Easter when the country found itself drawn into a conflict it has tried very hard to avoid.

By Jane Bradley
Wednesday, 27th April 2022

In the self-declared pro-Russian republic of Transnistria, in the south of Moldova on the Ukrainian border, two blasts struck the Grigoriopol district in the early hours of Monday morning, taking out masts broadcasting Russian radio stations.

A few hours later, the city of Tiraspol - the capital of the breakaway state – also reported a series of attacks on the building of the Tiraspol Security Service, the MGB, blowing out several windows on the upper floors.

Moldovan president Maia Sandu yesterday held an emergency meeting with her security council, where she described the situation as “complex and tense”.

Tiraspol is the capital of the self-declared breakaway republic of Transnistria.

She said: “What is happening in the last 24 hours in the Transnistrian region is an escalation of tensions. Our analysis, at this time, shows that there are tensions between different forces within the region, interested in destabilising the situation. This makes the Transnistrian region vulnerable and poses risks to the Republic of Moldova.”

Transnistria, known officially as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (PMSSR), was created in 1990 by pro-Soviet separatists, who wanted to remain part of the USSR when the rest of Moldova was vying for independence – or a possible unification with Romania.

Russian troops are still stationed there, although the region remains technically part of Moldova – and is internationally recognised as such – where the main language is Romanian. The government has, in recent years, moved closer to the West.

Yet more than 30 years on from its formation, the region is still seen as a Soviet throwback. Russian display tanks greet visitors as they enter Tiraspol, while a statue of Vladimir Lenin stands proudly in the city. Its is the only flag in the world to have retained the Communist symbol of the hammer and sickle

Footage of the border between Transnistria and Moldova yesterday saw queues of cars apparently trying to leave the region. However, locals insisted it was due to people going about their normal business, rather than a mass exodus of Transnistrians desperate to leave amid fears of unrest.

“Everything is quiet, people are going to work,” a man living in Transnistria told local media.

The attacks, the source of which are as yet unknown, have worried pro-Russian forces. They follow a series of blasts on key sites across Russia in recent days and a number of fake bomb threats phoned into schools and medical institutions in Transnistria.

It is unclear who is behind the attacks. Claims are they are “false flags” carried out by Russia itself to use as a reason for provocation against Ukraine and potentially Moldova. This has been questioned due to the high-value targets chosen.

Professor Luke March, deputy director of the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre at the University of Edinburgh, said he believed that within Russia, the attacks were likely to be resistance fighters trying to interrupt the war effort. However, in Transnistria, he thinks the attack on the security headquarters could be a “false flag”.

"We can only speculate, it could be [resistance] forces within Transnistria or Moldova itself, but it could be a provocation from the Russian side to have something that’s a pretext for intervention, to show that Russians are being oppressed there,” he said. “However, the radio mast bombing is less likely to be. I don't think that Russia would be doing anything to stop its Russian language coverage of those areas, because it's got a very tenuous hold anyway.”

The Transnistrian authorities yesterday announced a “code red” of a high risk of terrorism in the region. It claimed, without explanation, that cars seen fleeing the scene of the Tiraspol blasts had Lithuanian registration plates.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned the situation in Transnistria was a “matter of concern” for the Russian Federation.

The blasts came four days after Moldova submitted the first part of its formal membership application for the EU, although accession is not likely to take place in the near future. President Sandu, who took on the post in December 2020 after running on a pro-European ticket, has insisted she is committed to keeping Transnistria part of Moldova, despite the conflict being a barrier to EU accession.

Moldova has been criticised for its neutral stance during the Ukraine conflict, refusing to take part in any sanctions against its Russian neighbour.

Yet the country, which is one of the poorest in Europe with an average salary of less than £300 a month, has little choice. It relies heavily on Russian gas, while the government also knows it has been within Russian sights as a potential target, one of the multiple "vulnerabilities" both in terms of security and economy cited by President Sandu.

Last week, a Russian senior military general was reported to have said his country wants to take over “southern Ukraine” and open a land bridge into a pro-Russian breakaway republic in Moldova, raising fears of an incursion into the country.

Military commander Major General Rustam Minnekayev said Russia believed there was evidence of "instances of oppressing the Russian-speaking population" in the republic, in echoes of the claims made by Russia about Ukraine as justification of its invasion.

Prof March said while Russia’s plans undoubtedly include Transnistria, it would be unlikely to be in the near future due to demands on military resources in Ukraine. But he warned President Sandu should be concerned.

He said: “It’s a constitutionally neutral state and has made that choice of never asking for Nato membership and instead concentrating on the EU, so it really doesn’t want to militarise the situation. However, Moldova is very internally divided and while the pro-Europeans are on top at the moment, the pro-Russian forces are pretty strong there as well.

"Pro-Russians in Moldova are more pro-Russian than those in Ukraine. The pro-Russians in Ukraine still have quite a strong sense of being Ukrainian as well as being favoured towards Russia. Sandu will be very concerned about that political situation.

"But there is a way in which they could play this in their favour. If we are realising that Russia is an active threat and we need to harden our defences, that actually might be construed as strengthening Moldova’s case for bringing it in on this side of the barrier.”

 

Tensions are rising in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniestria, adjacent to Ukraine, where authorities say explosions have hit radio masts and the state security service headquarters in the space of a day. FRANCE 24's International Affairs Editor Philip Turle explains why the region is emerging as a possible new flashpoint of the war in Ukraine.