Why are Ukrainian troops rushing towards the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant?

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What is Ukraine up to in the Kursk region of Russia? Ukrainian forces launched a cross border offensive towards the Russian city of Kursk a few days ago and have captured 100km2 of territory north of the Ukrainian city of Sumy.

Military analysts are puzzled since Ukraine cannot hope to hold this territory without air support, but I suspect that the capture of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant is the real aim and I think I know why.

Sodium Haze readers will recall the many Ukrainian attempts to recapture the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southeastern Ukraine. It is the largest nuclear power station in Europe and has been occupied by Russian forces since 3rd March 2022.

Western governments were (rightly) quick to condemn the dangerous nature of the Russian attack on this nuclear facility. Once the plant had fallen though, the optics of repeated Ukrainian attacks on the same plant, presented a PR challenge for the western media who resorted to peddling absurd stories that the Russians were somehow intentionally endangering the plant while in full possession of it. We covered all this at the time, noting that:

Quite aside from the fact the Russians obviously had no investment in blowing up their own power plant while they were standing in it, the modern VVER-1000 reactors at Zaporizhzhia are of a completely different kind to the RBMK reactors at Chernobyl and thus a disaster like that was quite impossible.

After days of stoking fears of a Chernobyl style meltdown at Zaporizhzhia, the media swiftly gave up on the idea as plainly daft, but I wondered at the time if this PR gambit was trialled as a way of justifying direct NATO involvement in Ukraine.

Fast forward to the present and the western media are being very coy as to why convoys of Ukrainian troops are barreling in the direction of Kursk, refusing to draw the obvious conclusion as to what they are after.

Now if the hoopla about Zaporizhzhia was indeed a PR gambit to justify direct NATO involvement in Ukraine, then a battle around the Kursk NPP would offer a much more plausible narrative.

The reactors at Kursk are of the same RBMK-1000 design as those at Chernobyl. If Ukraine could capture the plant then the Russians would have a serious problem as Ukraine would swiftly use it as an army base, just as Russia did with Zaporizhzhia.

Leaving the site under Ukrainian control would be an extreme embarrassment to Moscow, but trying to recover it could provide the West with a plausible pretext for boots on the ground in Northern Ukraine as a ‘peacekeeping’ measure to prevent another Chernobyl like disaster at Kursk.

If I am right this is a desperate plan, but these are desperate times for NATO’s gambit in Ukraine which is falling apart in the Donbass and many other places. Some have speculated that with cease-fire negotiations imminent, that the Ukrainians might hope to swap the Kursk NPP and the territory around it for the Zaporizhzhia NPP and that might be true.

I suspect however that the real reason for this lunge towards Kursk is that NATO has decided to go ‘all in’ over Ukraine and is looking for an excuse to introduce troops and aircraft into the combat arena, not necessarily to win the war, but to strengthen the negotiation position of Ukraine.

I hope I am wrong, for such a plan would be insane, risking not just a nuclear incident at Kursk but also a nuclear war. In my darker moments I reflect on the question asked back in March 2022 of the Russians by Sky News:

“We’ve reached the point now of maximum fear.” Professor Clarke chirped happily and then answered the question nobody asked him about whether the Russians are mad enough to ‘disturb’ the Zaporizhzhia NPP: “…are they mad enough to do it? Yes they are!”

Given how committed the USA is to the objective of destabilising Russia, are they mad enough to see the advantages in a major release of radiation just 500km from Moscow, especially if they could blame it on Russia? I think they are.