Russia remains “fully committed to the principle that nuclear war is unacceptable”, believes that “there can be no winners in such a conflict and consequently it should never be unleashed”. This was stated by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in an interview quoted by the Tass agency. “It is necessary to prevent any military confrontation between nuclear powers, because it risks turning into a nuclear confrontation: the most important objective at the moment is for each nuclear power to exercise maximum restraint”, stressed Lavrov. The Russian Foreign Minister then said that “the possession of nuclear weapons in the context of deterrence is today the only possible answer to some significant external threats” to Russia’s security, underlining that the “development of the situation” around Ukraine confirms the validity of Moscow’s concerns in this sector. “The state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence – assured Lavrov – is exclusively defensive and aimed at maintaining the potential of nuclear forces at the minimum level necessary for the guaranteed defense of sovereignty and territorial integrity, preventing aggression against Russia and its allies”.
“The multilateral meetings on Ukraine in Jeddah and Copenhagen to which Russia was not invited show that the West does not intend to negotiate anything with Moscow“there is currently “no prospect for talks” on Ukraine “between Russia and the West” as “Western sponsors continue to push Kiev to up the ante,” added Lavrov “The longer the armed clashes last, the less interest Western investors will have in contributing to the post-war recovery in Ukraine and the weaker their confidence in Kiev’s success on the battlefield,” according to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov puts in doubt that “Kiev will be able to service its public debt. Taxpayers in Western countries will have no choice but to carry the burden of unpaid debt, causing more inflation and lowering living standards,” the Russian Foreign Minister said.
007 USA: the Kiev counter-offensive will not achieve its objectives
Some impatience on the part of Ukraine’s allies had already been perceived in recent days, emerging in more or less explicit ways. Now the intelligence of the United States increases the dose, letting the Washington Post filter the belief that the counteroffensive in Kiev will not achieve the objectives set, including that of reconquering Melitopol (key city in the south-east of the country): a crucial step to break the land corridor that connects Russia to Crimea since Vladimir Putin’s forces conquered the entire Ukrainian coast on the Sea of Azov.
While it makes you shiver the budget of 18 months of war: they would be already half a million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers dead or wounded on the battlefield. The defenses prepared by Moscow, which is defending the occupied territory through minefields and trenches, are creating more than one problem and are raising questions in Kiev and in Western capitals as to why a counter-offensive involving the use of hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons and military equipment fails to achieve its objectives. From the USA comes the no comment by Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, who does not venture predictions “because war, this war, is unpredictable”. A new cold shower from US intelligence fell a few days after the disputes between Kiev and NATO: the head of the cabinet, Stian Jenssen, had said that Ukraine could eventually cede territories to Russia as part of an agreement to end to war and join the Alliance. Jenssen then corrected himself and the secretary general Jens Stoltenberg then closed the question by reiterating that it is up to the Ukrainians alone to decide when there will be the conditions to start peace negotiations. The feeling, however, is that there is a bit of fatigue, the so-called ‘war fatigue’. Also because the war has been going on for almost a year and a half now and in addition to billions it also burns human lives. According to the New York Times, 500,000 soldiers died or were wounded among the Ukrainian and Russian ranks. A difficult calculation to make considering that Moscow tends to lower its estimates and Kiev does not report official data.
On the ground
Russia says it shot down another drone bound for Moscow in the night, but the alarm as usual still caused the temporary closure of the airspace above the capital’s Vnukovo airport. The fragments would have fallen into the Expocenter without causing any casualties or significant damage to the building. The attack on the headquarters of the ‘popular police’ in Energodar, the city that hosts the Zaporizhzhia plant, occupied by the Russians, seems to have gone well. The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service (GUR) claimed it with a video stating that it injured almost all the leaders. It is not clear, however, whether Kiev’s hand is behind the fire that broke out in an area of about 1300 square meters of the Russian port of Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea, in the south-west of the country. According to the Russian media, some wooden pallets would have caught fire, but in the videos circulating on the web we see a large black smoke interspersed with some explosions whose nature is not clear. The port of Novorossiysk, where oil tankers also pass, had been the scene of the attack on August 4 on the Olenegorsky Gornyak landing ship, hit and half sunk by a Kiev marine drone with a load of 450 kilos of dynamite.
The Ukrainian forces hope more and more in the decisive contribution of the F-16 which, however, will be slow to arrive, pending pilot training in Kiev. A coalition of 11 NATO countries will begin training them in August in Denmark and another center will be set up in Romania. The US has given Copenhagen and Amsterdam the green light to send fighter jets to Ukraine as soon as this is completed.