Kursk operating same reactor model that melted down in 1986. IAEA’s Grossi says he’s enormously concerned, plans to visit

It has been three weeks since ground units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine crossed into the Kursk province in southwestern Russia, surprising — or maybe not surprising — the U.S. and its clients in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Two days later, the AFU began artillery and drone attacks in Belgorod, a province just south of Kursk. It has been a little more than a week since explosions at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which lies in what is now Russian territory along the Dnipro River, ignited a fire in one of the plant’s two cooling towers. All six reactors are now in cold shutdown.

Conflicted Western leaders have encouraged and armed Ukraine to fight a war it has no chance of winning

The bold and surprising incursion across the border into the Kursk region of Russia has won Ukraine the temporary possession of several Russian villages and a few hundred square miles of Russian territory. But the strategically cheap Russian land may have been bought at a very costly price. The Ukrainian armed forces managed a lightning advance through largely undefended territory. But that territory is defended now, and the advance seems already to have been slowed. And though it seems to have lost momentum well short of its goals, Ukraine may still have to pay the full price.

Two weeks after Ukraine launched its surprise attack, Russian forces have recovered from the initial shock and are trying to use the expanding war to their battlefield advantage.

There is only one acceptable end to the war in Ukraine. And it doesn’t involve giving Kyiv the weapons it would need to entirely drive Russia out

In a war of attrition, the objective is to exhaust the adversary. Any territorial conquest comes after that as well-defended defensive lines are costly to break in terms of manpower and equipment.

I had not considered the implication of the Kursk operation as crossing a “red line” until I heard Scott Ritter discussing the matter with Nima. The role of the United States and other NATO allies in planning and supplying Ukraine with intelligence, weapons and some troops (in the form of “mercenaries”), is a casus belli. Pure and simple.

While Kyiv has succeeded in capturing headlines, it’s unclear at this point what the mission will actually achieve

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has proven himself a master of the political stage, a gifted orator capable of stirring emotions and garnering global support. However, his recent military incursion into Russia marks a departure from the realm of diplomacy and into the territory of strategic blunder.