Hi there everyone,
I arrived in Kyiv safe and sound early this morning. Went straight to the hotel for a quick shower and then headed about 2 hrs. north to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, scene of the 1986 meltdown!
Tomorrow at 8 pm EET, 7 pm CET and 1 pm EST, I’ll host this week’s live Q&A from Kyiv. The session will be dedicated to Ukraine and not least what I discovered up at Chernobyl today.
As we approached Chernobyl we noticed that anti-drone netting was being put up to safeguard the road. Quite interesting as the border region to Belarus has been quiet since the Russians pulled back from the area in May 2022.
These new measures tell us that there’s a new threat assessment by the Ukrainian Military Intelligence for the Belarus border areas. I’ll tell you much more about it tomorrow.
I’ll also go over my first impressions of the current military and political situation and obviously a few nuggets from our visit to the Chernobyl NPP. We attended a memorial service for the fallen National Guardsmen in the area when the Russians came charging from Belarus in February 2022. The Ukrainians have removed the old Soviet memorial at Chernobyl and instead built a new memorial which was inaugurated today.
The service was given by no less than the “Metropolitan of Kyiv” the highest ranking person in the Ukrainian clergy.
As it happened the Metropolitan joined our tour of the nuclear power plant afterwards. Some of you may say, “but Jacob how he would do that in all those clerical garments?” I can testify that even top clerics need to strip down like everyone else and get on their gear for radioactive precaution. No saints in the NPP! Obviously I wouldn’t ask his highness for a selfie in that situation, but he did sneak right behind me at one point so I couldn’t resist:-
Anyhow, now it’s documented!
I will see you tomorrow and tell you all about it. I you aren’t a paid subscriber yet, do consider becoming one. You can join via this link:
https://open.substack.com/live-stream/172896?utm_source=live-stream-scheduled-upsell
Get all your good Ukraine questions ready.
Cheers,
Jacob
