Russia denounces that Ukraine plans to detonate a nuclear weapon and raise the war to a definitive conflict while kyiv calls it a “pretext”
Nuclear terror resurfaced yesterday in the Russo-Ukrainian war. The Kremlin’s Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigú, maintained an unusual display of communications with the West by calling his French, British and Turkish counterparts to convey the fear that the kyiv government is manufacturing a ‘dirty bomb’. According to Shoigu, it would be a plan devised as a “provocation” to detonate it in Ukraine’s own territory and blame the attack on Moscow. However, he warned that such an event would convulse the international community, would contribute to an unpredictable but definitive “escalation” of the conflict and probably to a conflagration with no return.
A ‘dirty bomb’ is a nuclear device whose purpose is not to cause the catastrophe of an atomic explosion, but more contained destruction through the dispersion of radioactive material. A lethal hell, in any case, for all those people residing in its area of action and with very long-term polluting consequences. Some Russian media explain that the manufacture is in its final phase and that it has been entrusted to scientists from the kyiv Nuclear Research Institute, using the uranium from the mines of Zhovti Vody, a city in the Dnepropetrovsk region that concentrates the country’s deposits. .
It is extremely complex to discern the veracity of Moscow’s complaint. The invasion of Ukraine is characterized by a parallel war of disinformation involving Moscow and kyiv, but also the United States and the United Kingdom, the four actors that provide reports almost daily. In the current stage of the conflict, in which the ‘nuclear ghost’ is spoken of with alarming frequency, Shoigú resorted yesterday to the European defense ministers to the theory of Ukrainian «provocation», framed in a «constant tendency to uncontrolled escalation’ that the war is taking.
But it is also true that the threat of a ‘dirty bomb’ represents a two-way argument: kyiv responded to Shoigu that his accusations are “dangerous and absurd lies” that constitute a “pretext” for the Kremlin to consider itself free to use a low-intensity atomic bomb against the Ukrainian Army, especially now that the counteroffensive has gained ground in the occupied regions.
Second call to the US
Be that as it may, the multiplication of calls from the Russian minister to Western governments is unprecedented. Apart from his French, British and Turkish colleagues, Shoigú spoke with the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin; the second time in three days. In the previous one, held on Friday, the two spoke about the contest and agreed to “keep the channels of communication open.”
The probability that the term ‘dirty bomb’ would appear is something that some international observers have handled since the war crisis entered a nuclear angle, understood as a factor within the reach of several hands capable of taking the war to a new and terrifying level. Last night, the division was palpable among analysts, who were torn between believing that Moscow’s alarm could be real or just a smoke screen. Ben Wallace, British defense minister, refuted the hypothesis of a ‘dirty bomb’ in the hands of Ukraine.
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