This article initially appeared in iPolitics. A short excerpt is available below, and the full article may be read here.
By Aurel Braun and David Matas, March 14, 2022
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens the survival of the Ukrainian people and the existence of Ukraine as an independent country. And if the unrestrained military assaults weren’t horrific enough, they also pose grave internal and external nuclear perils to Ukraine and the world.
First, whether intentionally or indiscriminately, Russia fired rockets at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, causing a fire that didn’t damage the core, fortunately. If it had, it would have devastated Ukraine and Europe.
Second, as part of the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin has put Russia’s nuclear forces on special alert and threatened those states that might help Ukraine. If used in its entirety, Russia has enough nuclear weaponry to cause a planetary nuclear winter.
It’s already disturbing that Russia’s justifications of the invasion reveal a regime out of touch with reality. The Russian government calls a Ukrainian government led by a Jewish president and minister of defence a neo-Nazi regime. Without evidence, it condemns Ukraine for inflicting a genocide on Donbas. The motivations of the corrupt Russian leaders, insofar as they’re rational at all, are greed and power, covered by a thin veneer of an ideology of greater Russia.
