Russian official says Ukraine’s nuclear activities could signal making ‘dirty bomb’
The head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service says Ukraine’s nuclear activities could be a signal of working on a “dirty bomb.”
Sergei Naryshkin said in a statement on Monday the service had information that a batch of “irradiated fuel” had secretly been sent from the Rivne nuclear plant in western Ukraine for disposal at a spent fuel storage facility in Chernobyl.
The action, Naryshkin said, was suspicious and could only be explained by Kiev intending to create that kind of bomb.
The spy chief said he hoped the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European Union would look into Ukraine’s nuclear activity.
The so-called dirty bombs are explosives laced with radioactive, biological, or chemical materials, which spread in an explosion. Also known as a radiological dispersal device (RDD), it involves mixing explosives, such as dynamite, with radioactive powder or pellets. When such a device explodes, it sends radioactive material over a wide area.
In a letter to UN Security Council members, Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said in 2022 that Ukraine’s nuclear research facility and mining company had “received direct orders from (President Volodymyr) Zelensky’s regime to develop such a dirty bomb.”
Shortly after, President Vladimir Putin called for the IAEA to inspect Ukraine’s nuclear sites “as fast as possible.”
And IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said back then that the inspections had “begun – and would soon complete verification activities at two locations in Ukraine.”
In a separate letter to the UN secretary-general in October 2022, Russia pointed to another “heinous scenario” it believed was plotted by Kiev to sabotage a nuclear power plant under its control or shell the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is under Russian control.
Kiev and its Western allies dismissed the remarks, and accused Russia of preparing an attack of this kind.
Russia said earlier in June that Ukraine had launched an unsuccessful attack against Europe’s largest nuclear power plant – Zaporizhzhia.
The Soviet-era facility has been in Russia’s hands since March 2022, a month after Moscow launched its military campaign against Ukraine.
Ever since Russia’s capture of the Zaporizhzhia plant, both sides of the conflict have been blaming the other for attacks against the facility, which raises the risk of generating nuclear contamination in the region.
Moscow has described Kiev's attacks against the facility as "nuclear terrorism."
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