Eric Zuesse
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
1 June 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
“Kiev Drone Strikes Zaporozhzhye NPP; West IAEA Silent; Russia Orekhov Breakthrough; Konstantinovka”
31 May 2026
There’s been a stream of articles
13:00
from the Ukrainians
13:03
and from Western commentators who
13:06
support Ukraine saying that the Zaphorozhia nuclear power plant must be returned to
13:14
Ukrainian control because whilst it is
13:17
in Russian control, it is in some way,
13:22
its operation is in some way unsafe.
13:27
This
13:29
is a claim made
13:32
against Russia
13:35
whose nuclear
13:39
monopoly
13:40
or Rosatom
13:42
operates one of the largest civil
13:46
nuclear programs
13:48
in the world
13:50
and which has a globally acknowledged
13:55
reputation
13:57
for very high expertise
14:01
and a very good safety record in exactly
14:08
this field,
14:10
about which I’m unable to say the same
14:14
in relation to Ukraine.
14:17
So, anyway, it’s clear that the
14:20
Ukrainians are obsessed with the
14:23
Zaphorozhia nuclear power plant.
14:26
They seem to desperately want it back.
14:29
It looks to me as if they have given up
14:32
hope of getting it back under their
14:37
control via military operations.
14:41
So what they seem to be trying to do and
14:43
this is — I will say straight away my own
14:46
interpretation but I cannot imagine any
14:49
other — is create some kind of accident at
14:52
the Zaphorozhia nuclear power plant which
14:55
would supposedly lend force to the claim
14:59
that they have been making and which
15:02
their friends in the west have also been
15:05
making, that the Zaphorozhia power plant must
15:09
be transferred back to them because that
15:14
is the only way that it can be operated
15:18
safely.
15:19
So, in order to make that happen again —
15:23
this is my
15:25
reasoning, but I don’t think based on
15:29
what we know this reasoning can be
15:32
faulted — the
15:36
Ukrainians have been taking shots, making
15:40
against the Zaphorozhia nuclear power
15:42
plant previously with artillery, now
15:46
with drones, in order to try to create
15:51
some kind of accident there. Now, all of
15:54
this is taking place even as the
15:56
Zaphorozhia nuclear power plant is being
15:59
monitored by the International Atomic
16:02
Energy
16:04
Agency.
16:06
And, as was the case with Iran, one of
16:11
the extraordinary things about the
16:14
IAEA’s
16:17
role in this affair is the extraordinary
16:22
contortions that
16:24
its secretariat,
16:27
and its officials, have gone through in
16:31
order to
16:33
avoid
16:35
having to say, or avoid saying, who
16:40
exactly
16:41
is responsible for these attacks on the
16:45
Zaphorozhia nuclear power plant.
16:48
Um, they do not deny that these attacks
16:54
are taking place.
16:57
They have never said that it is the
16:58
Russians who are carrying them out.
17:02
But they won’t acknowledge that it is
17:05
the Ukrainians,
17:07
even though it is obvious to anybody
17:10
who’s been following this affair that it
17:14
is indeed the Ukrainians who have been
17:16
carrying out the attacks on the
17:18
Zaphorozhia nuclear power plant. Now, as to
17:22
that,
17:24
and in order to put this issue beyond
17:27
all doubt,
17:29
let me just also add that, just as the
17:33
American media
17:36
confirmed the Ukrainian commando attacks
17:42
to try to recapture the Zaphorozhia
17:45
nuclear power plant — to my astonishment
17:49
by the way, and
17:53
continued incredulity —
17:56
in various
17:59
commentaries about the war, the Americans,
18:02
the US media — the New York Times I
18:05
believe it was — again let slip the fact
18:09
that in the case of the previous
18:13
shelling, the shelling that took place,
18:15
from my memory in 2023,
18:18
it was the Ukrainians not the Russians
18:21
who were shelling the Zaphorozhia nuclear
18:24
power plant. Certainly, that is my clear
18:26
recollection, and I have no doubt that
18:29
that was what I read in the American the
18:32
US media at the time. So, in summary, I
18:38
have no doubt that this incident took
18:39
place, that there was indeed a drone
18:42
attack on the Zaphorozhia nuclear power
18:45
plant — that the facts of that attack are
18:49
as the Russians described it. The
18:52
Russians have invited the IAEA,
18:56
whose personnel are already there in the
19:00
plant, to inspect the damage and to see
19:05
for themselves
19:07
and I have no doubt, given the previous
19:10
history, that it was the Ukrainians who
19:13
were involved. Now,
19:17
the thing that
19:19
again
19:20
ought to concern everyone
19:23
is that there is total silence about
19:26
this in the Western media. We’ve just
19:31
had a drone attack on a nuclear power
19:34
plant.
19:35
One which penetrated the roof of a
19:41
machine building. And this is an attack
19:44
with a drone
19:48
with an explosive warhead
19:51
that was obviously intended to do
19:54
damage. And it was apparently a fiber
19:57
optic drone which therefore must have
20:02
known the target — whose operator must
20:05
have known the target he or she was
20:09
attacking.
20:11
And yet the media in the West, western
20:15
governments,
20:17
have absolutely nothing publicly to say
20:21
about this affair.
20:23
Now that seems to me extraordinary
20:27
and frankly terrible.
20:32
But again, it’s not surprising that this
20:35
happens.
20:36
Frankly,
20:38
I don’t think that there is anything
20:40
that the Ukrainians
20:43
could do in this war, however bad and
20:47
awful it might be, which would attract
20:52
negative commentary and criticism
20:56
in the West.
20:58
…
——
MY COMMENTS:
I, too, remember most of those incidents, and can affirm each of those, but Mercouris has a total-recall memory, which I don’t, and he even has logged, in his head, everything on a timeline, which, whenever I have checked it, I have found it to be accurate, and also his logic is nearly always flawless (and his combination of those three quite extraordinary abilities is almost unique). But, in any case, the entirety of this 80-minute commentary from him is filled wth details that provide a thoroughly credible reconstruction of where things are, and where they are heading, in this war; so, I think that all 80 minutes of it are worth hearing, if a person has the time. What I have excerpted from it is just 8 minutes — one tenth — of it.
If one wants, in addition, a superb 13-minute video summary of this war on May 31st, with cellphone footages and maps describing the purely military actions of both sides inside Ukraine, that is supplied here.
Back on 30 January 2025, I had headlined “A Possible Turnabout in the Ukraine War”, which was due to a sharp increase in Ukrainian drone attacks deep into Russian territory, which had hit around 10% of Russia’s oil refineries and storage facilities, and even some military facilities. However, the latest on that is from Meduza, anti-war Russians in Latvia, on May 28th, and is headlined “A new Meduza analysis finds Ukraine’s long-range strikes are reaching twice as deep but not surging in 2026. Russia’s refineries, meanwhile, keep bouncing back.” Apparently, though this has been the most successful offensive military operation yet by Ukraine, it appears not to have been the “turnabout” that back at that time it seemed to me likely to become.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
