Though Zelensky frames the question in terms of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the IAEA demand that Russia cease all actions directed at the plant, the larger point is Putin and his allies threatening to nuke someone several times a week Putin’s Spokesman Won’t Rule out Using Nukes if Russia’s Existence Is Threatened; Putin Orders Russian Nuclear Forces on Alert Status as His Ukrainian Adventure Stalls). You must always plan based on the enemy’s capabilities, not their intentions. If you don’t, you end up mired in a seven-month-long war with no end in sight when you thought the enemy’s army would defect (Putin Shows Signs of Panic, as He Calls on Ukraine Military to Mutiny) and an adoring populace would welcome you.

The West is faced with two rather stark choices. It can reward Putin’s use of nuclear blackmail and choose to live with Putin’s aggressive version of Russian imperialism that guarantees we will fight wars like this again in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland. Or it can acknowledge that Russia has nuclear weapons and, as we did successfully for the half-century of the Cold War, use diplomacy to deter Putin from pulling the trigger.

I don’t think anyone should want to live in a world where a rogue actor gets what he wants just because he threatens to nuke someone. That’s just me. //

Well over two million Ukrainians from the illegally occupied areas of Ukraine have been forcibly deported to remote regions of Russia. In June, the Russian wire service Interfax quoted Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the National Defence Management Centre of the Russian Federation, saying 1,936,911 Ukrainians have been deported to Russia since the beginning of the war; 307,423 of whom are children. The UN has warned Russia about placing Ukrainian children for adoption in Russian homes and, as early as March, raised concerns about some 91,000 Ukrainian children who had been deported and separated from their parents and placed in boarding schools and Russian homes.

Zelensky characterizes the deportations as a form of genocide (the forcible adoption of Ukrainian children inside Russia is a clear violation of Article II of the 1949 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) but says it is currently impossible to know the scope of the deportations. //

MARGARET BRENNAN: Can there be stability in Europe if Vladimir Putin remains in power?

PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY: No.

I agree. I’m also coming to agree with the opinion of the former Commander, US Army Europe, and one-time guest in my house, retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges.

Angela Walters @AngelaW07792262
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Replying to @Gerashchenko_en
Lt-General (Retired) Ben Hodges former commander USArmy Europe @Telegraph
"Prepare for #Russia itself to disintegrate. The #Kremlin's disastrous losses in #Ukraine could result in the collapse of the #RussianFederation"
#Putin #RussianArmy #BlackSeaFleet
5:49 AM · Sep 14, 2022