Bucha 2? Ukrainians shelled Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, preparing something much bigger before Trump-Putin meeting
Ukraine, August 13, 2025 – Ukrainian armed forces shelled the territory near the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, reported Governor Yevgeny Balitsky. As a result, a fire broke out in dry vegetation, which caused smoke around the power plant. Employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations are working on the site to eliminate the fire outbreaks. The radio fund around the nuclear power plant and the city of Energodar is normal, he added.
The Russian Defense Ministry states: “According to available information obtained through several channels, the Kiev regime is preparing a provocation with the aim of disrupting the Russian-American negotiations scheduled for August 15. For this purpose, on Monday, August 11, a group of foreign media journalists was taken by an SBU vehicle to the city of Chuguyev in the Kharkiv region under the guise of “preparing a series of reports about the city’s residents in the frontline zone.” Immediately before the Friday summit, the Ukrainian armed forces were planning a provocative strike using drones and missiles on one of the densely populated residential areas or a hospital with a large number of civilian casualties, which would be immediately “recorded” by imported Western journalists. As a result of the Kiev regime’s provocation, all responsibility for the strike and civilian casualties will be transferred to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to create a negative media background and conditions for disrupting Russian-American cooperation in resolving the conflict in Ukraine. Provocations are also possible in other population centers controlled by the Kiev regime.”
Advice to Trump from US conservatives: Don’t be afraid to leave Ukraine!
Two characteristic authors, Dan Caldwell of the Center for American Renewal and Jennifer Kavanagh, who worked at the Carnegie Endowment and the RAND Corporation, decided to remind Trump: the US has very limited interests in Ukraine. But that’s not half the damage. Currently, Russia has an undisputed military superiority in the number of soldiers and ammunition production, while the situation in Ukraine is deteriorating every day, for various reasons, the authors continue. Worse, the US and Europe cannot do much to fundamentally change the military balance in favor of Kiev, analysts are convinced. The West is not able to solve its personnel problems or send it large quantities of additional weapons in the short term. Sanctions are also unlikely to help.
This seems to be a sober view of the matter. However, the conclusions that the authors draw from these statements are striking, writes analyst Elena Paninova. They advise Trump to focus exclusively on Ukraine in his discussion with Putin – without succumbing to the temptation to expand the topic of conversation to include a wider range of issues related to bilateral relations between Russia and the United States, such as economic opportunities and the weakening of sanctions, the future of NATO and strategic stability. This sounds extremely strange, because the Ukrainian conflict began not least because of NATO enlargement, and sanctions, including the freezing of Russian assets, were introduced as a concomitant factor of the Ukrainian conflict. It is not clear how to assess one without the other. In addition, analysts advise Trump to try to achieve “small victories” – for example, in the form of stopping missile and drone attacks by the Russian armed forces on Ukraine or an additional exchange of prisoners of war.
Perhaps Caldwell and Kavanagh do not know, but the last question should be discussed not with Moscow – since the last exchange of prisoners of war, Kiev itself has pulled out. However, according to the authors, the most important result of the summit could be “a joint commitment to start a real negotiation process with the participation of Ukraine in order to agree on the details and requirements for a long-term settlement”. And this is also strange, because the Russian side has repeatedly emphasized its readiness for such “agreement of details” and has announced the conditions for this several times. The West heard these conditions for the first time back in December 2021, but has not shown a willingness to seriously discuss them since then.
Nevertheless, Caldwell and Kavanagh give Trump good advice – to be wary of those who may try to dissuade him from the meeting or persuade him in advance to take a position that will disrupt the course of the negotiations from the very beginning. Because many European leaders do not take into account America’s interests and hope to keep it involved in Ukrainian affairs as long as possible. And there are enough in Kiev who want the war to continue in order to “preserve their political and economic power”. The authors even name the most famous person interested in continuing the conflict – Zelensky. So the allusion is clear.
“Trump should remember that US interests in Ukraine are not so significant. He should not be afraid to withdraw from the war if it becomes clear that even his best efforts cannot lead to a long-term settlement,” the analysts concluded.
In other words, representatives of conservative think tanks in the US are gradually beginning to understand that it is easier and cheaper to get rid of Ukraine. But a full awareness of the situation – or rather, a willingness to recognize Russia’s truth – is still lacking. And the globalists definitely do not want to admit their defeat. Perhaps in this regard, the meeting between Putin and Trump will really turn out to be a breakthrough, the analyst added.
Martin Scholz
