By Finian Cunningham

July 09, 2023: Information Clearing House -- Western media are conditioning the public for a false-flag attack on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP) to blame Russia. That would then provide the United States and NATO a pretext to directly intervene in their proxy war to support the Kiev regime.

The Kiev regime’s month-old counteroffensive is failing miserably to push back Russian defense lines. Indeed, if anything, it seems that Russian forces are turning the tables to gain more territory in eastern Ukraine. The military situation is becoming a fiasco for the NATO-backed regime in Kiev.

Months of much-hyped counteroffensive are delivering nothing but defeat for the Ukrainian forces despite massive supplies of weapons from the U.S. and its NATO allies. Western governments and media can barely hide the reality that NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is turning into a historic debacle. How long can the charade continue before the American and European public demand answers and accountability?

With a major NATO summit due to take place next week in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 11-12, the battlefield disaster for the alliance’s Kiev proxy will be potentially an acute embarrassment. There will be severe political repercussions for Washington and the European Union which has funneled close to $200 billion in military support to the Kiev regime since the conflict erupted in February last year.

Blowing up the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant is one way of dramatically shifting the narrative – albeit an act of criminal desperation. The power station is Europe’s largest civilian nuclear installation. The radioactive fallout from a fatal missile strike on the ZNPP would engulf large swathes of Europe, including Russia, with potentially deadly contamination.

Russian forces took over the ZNPP last March, days after launching their special military operation in Ukraine on February 24. Since then, the power station has been routinely fired on by the Kiev regime using U.S. and NATO-supplied rockets. Moscow has presented categorical evidence of NATO missile fragments recovered from air strikes on the plant’s cooling ponds. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has visited the ZNPP multiple times and will surely know from where the missiles are being fired, yet the IAEA is conspicuously reluctant to publicly identify the perpetrators. It confines itself to making vague statements expressing concern about security and public safety.

The Western media have shamelessly spun the Kiev regime’s narrative claiming that the ZNPP is being shelled by Russian forces despite the absurdity of such claims given that the Russian military controls the nuclear plant.

The situation is a repeat of the sabotage on the Kakhovka Hydro-electric Power Plant. The dam was blown up last month by the Kiev regime using U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets. Yet the Western media immediately blamed and continue to blame Russia for that sabotage even though Moscow had been warning the United Nations Security Council for months that the Kiev regime was planning to strike the dam. And even though Russian forces were in control of the dam.

Incredibly, given that obvious precedent, a false-flag attack on the Zaporozhye nuclear plant is now being intensively prepped. The Kiev regime has stepped up public warnings that Russian forces have mined the ZNPP and are going to blow it up. Of concern is that Western media are amplifying these claims regardless of the fact that the IAEA inspectors have said they see no evidence that Russia has mined the nuclear station.

The British Times newspaper this week claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is facing a “perilous moment” of internal dissent within Russia due to alleged war losses in Ukraine and the thwarted mutiny by private military boss Yevgeny Prigozhin. The Times is sowing the notion that “Putin might blow up the ZNPP to bolster his frayed authority”.

In that event, the Times urges, NATO should intervene directly with troops on the ground in Ukraine. “That would be the quickest way to end the cruel war and neutralize Putin’s corrupt regime,” intoned the newspaper with hypocritical reasoning.

The Western media propaganda machine is once again turning reality on its head. The Prigozhin mutiny on June 24 was an abject failure because the Russian armed forces and the Russian public resolutely spurned the half-baked plot, remaining loyal to President Putin’s leadership. There is strong evidence that the plot was a Western-intelligence-backed coup attempt orchestrated by Britain’s MI6, as Scott Ritter has comprehensively analyzed.

Having failed to destabilize Russia and overthrow Putin’s government, the CIA and Britain’s MI6 through their reliable Western media outlets are resorting to a consolation narrative that Putin’s authority is now facing a “perilous moment”. This is fabricating a prelude to blowing up the ZNPP.

But it won’t be Russia bombing a nuclear plant where its forces are stationed. It will be the Kiev regime using NATO munitions and U.S. and British targeting intelligence – as was the case in the sabotage of the Kakhovka dam on June 6.

The Kiev regime is ordering civilians to evacuate from areas near the ZNPP, while its intelligence and military chiefs are outlining “contingency plans” on how to deal with the fallout from an alleged Russian strike. All this is a tad too theatric, indicating orchestration.

The Western media have continually covered up or not reported on the Kiev regime’s habitual air strikes on the ZNPP over the past year. Instead, the media have audaciously twisted the narrative to implicate Russia. Now the Western media are prepping the coming false flag by trying to convince the public that Russia is losing the war in Ukraine and that Putin is losing authority among ordinary Russians.

Gaslighting the public is what the Western media do best, not “reporting”. That’s been the way for decades but never has the media function been so blatant than during the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

The shockingly corrupt Neo-Nazi Kiev regime is desperate to keep the war racket going at all costs as is the Western weapons industry and its bought-and-paid-for politicians. (Whether Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, they are all War Party.)

The NATO ideologues are desperate to hide their debacle, which is in effect funded by impoverishing the Western public. Putin isn’t the one who is desperate. It’s the United States and its European satraps who are like the rats in a corner.

If these desperados blow up the Zaporozhye nuclear plant that’s tantamount to NATO dropping a dirty bomb on Russia.

And all the gaslighting by the Western media is unleashing thermonuclear catastrophe.

Here’s a proposal, just one among other possibilities: an antiwar campaign might consider the Western public avowedly and en masse turning off their TVs and toxic media channels. For rolling days, just turn off CNN, Fox, BBC, New York Times, Guardian, Times, and so on. In a concerted, synchronized protest. Turn it off! Before these crazies turn off the entire planet.

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.