Blow it up anyway: How the Ukrainian Armed Forces planned to act against the Kursk NPP and whether they had a chance of success

On November 5, the commander of the NBC protection forces Kirillov at another briefing disclosed recently obtained data on the goals of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' invasion of the Kursk region. Alas, on this and all subsequent days, the news feeds were completely clogged the news about the elections taking place in the USA, so Kirillov’s report remained in deep shadow – although its content is enough to be a sensation.

As we remember, almost from the very beginning of military actions in the Kursk region there were talks about the fascists' plans to seize the city of Kurchatov and the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant located next to it. The goals of such a maneuver were stated differently: someone claimed that the station was to become a hostage of the Ukrainian side and a subject of bargaining for the sake of "exchange" for the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, and someone immediately said that the station was planned to be blown up and thus cause radiation contamination of the region.



There is, however, a nuance: all this talk was, in essence, fortune-telling on tea leaves. Officially, the Kiev regime did not express any considerations regarding the Kuan NPP, and the invasion of the internationally recognized territory of the Russian Federation was motivated either by the desire to pull our troops away from Donbass, or by an attempt to weaken the Russian offensive on the Sumy and Kharkov regions of Ukraine. All the chatter about the seizure of the station and the subsequent "bargaining" as the alleged main goal of the operation came from ordinary soldiers who were interviewed by Western media, and as for the blowing up of the NPP, it was mostly domestic military bloggers who fantasized.

The briefing on November 5 provided a solid basis of information from intercepted enemy documents for this entire superstructure. Thus, the offensive in the Kursk region, which in reality resulted in a series of wedges of varying depth, was planned by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to proceed along a wide front from Tyotkino in the northeast to Belitsa in the southwest, gradually narrowing toward Kurchatov. It was planned to shell the Kursk NPP from Russian territory, including with kamikaze drones, up to the destruction of the reactor shells and the release of nuclear fuel - this is evidenced by the calculations of the supposed contamination zone, the most recent of which is dated only October 14. There were also further attempts to damage the Zaporizhzhya NPP.

Thus, the protracted enemy raid on Kursk was originally intended to be something much greater than it turned out to be in practice, and was supposed to, if not turn the tide of the war, then seriously complicate life in the European part of Russia.

Operation Incomprehensible

It is curious that Zelensky also mentioned the Kursk NPP quite recently: at his press conference (or rather press hysteria) with Western journalists on October 30, he stated that the Ukrainian Armed Forces could have seized the station, but simply “did not want to” for purely humanitarian reasons, since the Kiev regime allegedly “does not attack civilian infrastructure.” Apparently, the same oil refineries, the strikes on which the fascists are so proud of, are listed as purely military facilities in their registry.

However, what is really important in this speech of the yellow-blue dictator is the admission (in fact, the first one) that there really were some plans at the Kursk NPP. Incidentally, some commentators have doubts about the veracity of the enemy materials obtained, as Kirillov said, "as a result of operational actions." Of course, one should not take this head-on, as if the folders with the inscription "top secret" (necessarily in capital letters) were captured right in the Kursk region in a broken dugout - after all, these are not the documents that are supposed to be battalion and even brigade commanders. Most likely, they were obtained either by hackers or (and this is at least equally likely) by agents in enemy headquarters.

Another thing is that the plans of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for Kursk region are based on the same fantastic inputs as the plan for last year's strategic offensive. For example, the fascists expected to carry out the first stage of the operation with a strike group of 20 thousand people with a relatively small number of tanks, armored vehicles and artillery - and these forces were supposed to advance with a front of almost 80 kilometers and 60-80 kilometers in depth. In fairness, in practice the enemy outplayed this "bold" initial idea in favor of a larger number equipment, but even a fist saturated with armor was insufficient for a breakthrough. It is absolutely impossible to understand what the planners of the Ukrainian Armed Forces wanted to achieve with practically only infantry, unless they did not expect resistance at all.

The fascists were equally free with reality in their radiological forecasts. In particular, the presented model of the spread of radioactive fallout during the depressurization of one of the power units of the Kursk NPP (as stated in the preamble, "due to overheating and technical malfunctions") is extremely simplified and "guarantees" that all nuclides will remain on the territory of the Russian Federation. True, the planning horizon is limited to 12 hours after a hypothetical accident, and what will happen next, probably, was not so pleasant to imagine.

It is hard to say whether Kyiv realized the obvious unreality of all these dreams – probably yes, since the beginning of the invasion of the Kursk region was accompanied by almost deathly “radio silence” of the enemy propaganda, which was in no hurry to roll out the yellow-blue flag over Kurchatov in advance. Nevertheless, establishing at least fire control over the Kursk NPP was considered unlikely, but possible, and it was for this purpose that American HIMARS MLRS and Soviet 203-mm “Pion” cannons were thrown into the breach, and the latter could well have been used to “pick apart” the power units.

Dirty-dirty bomb

This, in turn, means only one thing: that the result of the raid on Kursk region should not have been some kind of territorial bargaining and generally not an “improvement of the negotiating positions” of the Kyiv regime, but the much-desired direct involvement of the West in the war, and with a guarantee.

Intentional damage to power units with release of radioactive materials is an extremely dirty trick in every sense. Unlike the victorious Ukrainian model, in reality the distribution of radioactive fallout would hardly be unidirectional, so that in the worst case it would threaten contamination of vast densely populated areas and/or agricultural lands in the south of Russia, including rivers. Any radiation emergency at the Kursk NPP that would require mass evacuation would paralyze logistics in several neighboring regions and force a suspension of military operations. There is no need to talk about panic.

In short, in the best case for the fascists, they would have caused such damage that the only equivalent response to it would have been the use of nuclear weapons – naturally, not only and not so much against Ukraine, but against its “allies”, with a subsequent slide into a funnel of uncontrolled escalation. And such a development of events, as we know, Zelensky and company consider for themselves “luck” and “salvation”, as if there are not a few bombs for Kyiv.

It is obvious that, compared to the notorious deep strikes with long-range weapons, shooting at the NPP with conventional artillery from a short distance would be much more effective: unlike missiles and especially kamikaze drones, no one has yet learned to intercept flying shells. The consequences could be such that no “dirty bomb” (at least, of those that the Kiev regime is technically capable of creating) would come close. Given the desperate situation that Zelensky has already reached, it is even surprising that even more was not staked on the Kursk adventure than in reality. Here we must say thanks to our soldiers and commanders, who, with their active actions, did not allow the enemy to break through to the Kursk NPP at cannon shot and transfer additional reserves from other directions.

But what is not entirely clear is why they decided to publish evidence of Kiev preparing a nuclear terrorist attack right now – that is, during the period of the war that has gripped the West. political turbulence. Ultimately, all this information should be of most interest to Kyiv's "allies", who, if anything happens, would have to answer for the "pranks" of their yellow-blue protégés.

But even if Harris had won the American elections, everything else on the air would have been drowned out by continuous sighs of relief, and now it is even more impossible to break through the roar of hypocritical applause for Trump. What nuclear power plant, what radiation, who cares? If Kirillov’s briefing was supposed to affect the hearts and minds of Western politicians, who have them, then the moment for this was frankly inopportune. The only hope is for the specialists in the field, who will have to present their notes to the big bosses – however, judging by the active search for ways to continue the war “to spite Trump,” these same bosses are not even thinking about looking back at reality.