Russian attack | Putin: Russia will use munitions containing depleted uranium if the West gives them to Ukraine

Foreign countries|Russian invasion

Russia will use ammunition containing depleted uranium if the West gives them to Ukraine, said the Russian president Vladimir Putin on Saturday. This is reported by the news agency AFP.

“Without exaggeration: we have hundreds of thousands of such ammunition. We just haven’t used them yet,” Putin said, according to AFP.

Putin’s comments are a response to Britain, which confirmed earlier this week that it will supply ammunition containing depleted uranium for use by Ukraine.

Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the production of uranium fuel used in nuclear power plants or nuclear weapon material. It is very hard and dense and can be used to make highly penetrating projectiles.

Already at the beginning of the week Putin linked the munitions promised by Britain to nuclear weapons in practice. Putin said that Russia would be “forced to act” if Britain supplied Ukraine with “an ingredient for nuclear weapons”.

“The British armed forces have been using depleted uranium in their ammunition for decades. Russia knows this, but is deliberately trying to spread false information,” the British Ministry of Defense replied to Russia earlier this week.

Depleted uranium is known not to pose a radiation hazard in the short term, but it is a dangerous substance like heavy metals. Depleted uranium is also harmful to the environment, and its toxicity is considered a bigger risk than its radioactivity.