The Duma showed nuclear unity – Newspaper Kommersant No. 156 (7357) of 08.26.

The Council of the State Duma at an extraordinary meeting on Thursday adopted a statement “on the threats arising from the shelling of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant by Ukrainian military formations.” The initiative to prepare such a document last week was made by the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov. The deputies called the actions of the armed forces of Ukraine “nuclear blackmail” and called on the UN to demand that Kyiv stop shelling. It is important for deputies not so much to achieve some kind of reaction to this appeal, but to demonstrate “the preservation of political consensus,” the expert believes.

In its statement, the Council of the Duma strongly condemned the shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). “The critical infrastructure of the ZNPP is subjected to missile and artillery strikes, the violation of nuclear and physical safety of which threatens with a large-scale catastrophe in the center of the European continent. The consequences of the reckless actions of Kyiv, which gives orders to shell the Zaporizhzhya NPP, can become truly terrifying, ”the document says (recall, the Ukrainian authorities are accused of shelling the Russian military who control the territory of the plant).

The document also mentions the facts of undermining by Ukrainian saboteurs of power lines leading to the Kursk nuclear power plant. The authors of the statement noted the “selflessness of the Russian military”, who “until now manage to provide the necessary protection of the main facilities of the ZNPP and the nearby city of Energodar.” The Western countries that supply Ukraine with weapons are called “accomplices and accomplices in crimes” in the document.

In this regard, the Council of the Duma called on the UN, the IAEA and other international organizations to assess the actions of Kyiv and demand that the Ukrainian authorities immediately stop shelling the ZNPP and other dangerous objects.

The deputies also confirmed “the readiness of the Russian side to do everything necessary to organize an international IAEA mission to the ZNPP, so that the agency’s specialists could testify on the spot the presence of threats posed as a result of constant Ukrainian attacks on the nuclear power plant, fraught with tragic consequences for all mankind.”

In addition to the “nuclear topic”, the statement also touches upon a number of other issues related to the Russian special operation in Ukraine. Thus, the Council of the Duma mentioned the “Russophobic ideology” of Kyiv and “its NATO patrons”, demanded “to stop the supply of weapons to Ukraine, with which the anti-people Kyiv regime kills and maims people”, and even appealed to the citizens of Ukraine “with a request to realize the terrible consequences of the criminal and provocative policies of the Kyiv regime.

After the meeting of the council, representatives of all factions made statements to journalists, confirming their unified position on the issue under discussion.

The first deputy head of the United Russia faction, Vyacheslav Makarov, noted that the statement should acquire diplomatic overtones: “We understand that if the shelling does not stop, this will lead to a nuclear catastrophe, which will have consequences for the entire European continent. The United States and England, as sponsors of terrorism, must understand that if the supply of artillery weapons to the Ukrainian military is not stopped, this will lead to the biggest catastrophe of the 21st century.” Another first deputy head of the faction, Dmitry Vyatkin, added that the Russian army is now “the main and only guarantor of security” of both the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant and “the whole of Europe.”

The head of the New People faction, Aleksey Nechaev, called the shelling of the ZNPP “a sign of desperation and impotence”: “It is clear that the Ukrainian armed forces are unable to recapture either the power plant or the region.” In his opinion, the shelling is also “blackmailing Ukraine’s European partners” so that they allocate money and weapons if they do not want to get a “new Chernobyl”. And the leader of the Just Russia – For Truth party, Sergei Mironov, in this regard, recalled the draft law of the Socialist-Revolutionaries on recognizing Ukraine as a terrorist state, which they sent for review to the government.

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said that he initiated the appeal, since he himself served in the army for three years in the unit for combating atomic, chemical and bacteriological weapons. He called the main threat to security in the world “nuclear blackmail, which the Americans, using the forces of the Nazis, Bandera, fascists, organized in the “ridden Ukraine””. The communist also recalled the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in which “there was no military necessity,” and hypothetical plans to drop 50 nuclear bombs on Soviet cities.

Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party and head of the international committee of the State Duma, believes that the Kyiv regime “crossed all possible red lines.” At the same time, the deputy expressed confidence that “nothing can violate the security regime of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant,” but the UN and the IAEA must nevertheless “assess the actions of the armed forces of Ukraine.”

Political scientist Alexei Makarkin believes that the statement of the State Duma Council will not be of great importance for the UN, since foreign policy in Russia is in the competence of other institutions – the president and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“Professional diplomats work in the UN, people who will listen to Russia’s position and take it into account, but will not accept it as the truth,” the expert explains. In his opinion, the statement of the leadership of the Duma has a different task – to demonstrate the preservation of political consensus, the fact that all factions represented in parliament support power and no changes have occurred since the start of the military special operation in Ukraine. “The West would like Russian society to change its attitude to power, but the deputies demonstrate that this is not happening,” Mr. Makarkin sums up.

Ksenia Veretennikova