GLOBAL TIMES 06/13/23
By GT Staff

“Under the guise of ‘liberating’ Ukraine from a reliance on Russia’s dirty energy imports, there has been an explosion of investment in oil and gas infrastructure which, once it’s built, will be around for a long time,” Michael Shank, an adjunct professor at the New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, said in an opinion piece published on Newsweek on May 14.

“Concerns loom large regarding new nuclear power plants being targeted for nuclear terrorism,” Shank said. “All these American approaches to ‘saving Ukraine’ and ‘liberating’ them from Russian reliance reinforce a centralized energy system. And that’s exactly what Ukraine doesn’t need. Ukraine needs to decentralize its energy system, not centralize it.”

Big nuclear plants and big coal, gas, and oil facilities just give enemies bigger targets to bomb, sabotage, or hack, Shank argued.

Just as Shank concluded, if Americans really want to help the people of Ukraine and their security, which is what they claim to care about, “clean reconstruction is what will set the country on a more stable path: Local jobs, local power plants, local supply, and local control.”