Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has told the United Nations Security Council that Ukraine is preparing to use a „dirty bomb” laced with radioactive material on its own territory.
Western and Ukrainian officials have dismissed this statement as a means of escalating the war.
Moscow sent a letter detailing the allegations to the UN on Monday and raised the issue at a closed meeting with the UNSC on Tuesday.
„We’re quite satisfied because we raised the awareness”, Russia’s Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters.
This follows hints from Moscow that it might be forced to use a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the dirty bomb allegation showed Moscow was planning such an attack and seeking to blame Kyiv.
With Ukrainian forces advancing into Russian-occupied Kherson province, threatening a considerable defeat for Moscow, Russian officials phoned their Western counterparts on Sunday and Monday to air their suspicions.
Russia has alleged that Kyiv ordered two organizations to create a dirty bomb, an explosive device laced with radioactive material, without giving any evidence.
France, the United Kingdom and the United States said the allegations were „transparently false” and Washington warned Russia there would be “severe consequences” for any use of nuclear weapons.
Russia’s defense ministry said the aim of a dirty bomb attack by Ukraine would be to blame Moscow for the radioactive contamination, which it said Russia had begun preparing for.
In an apparent response to Moscow’s allegation, the UN nuclear watchdog said it was preparing to send inspectors to two unidentified Ukrainian sites at Kyiv’s request, both already subject to its inspections.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters the inspectors would receive full access, and he called on Moscow to demonstrate the same transparency as Ukraine.
Russia’s state news agency RIA has identified what it said were the two sites involved – the Eastern Mineral Enrichment Plant in the central Dnipropetrovsk region and the Institute for Nuclear Research in Kyiv.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian state enterprise that operates the country’s four nuclear power plants, said Russian forces have carried out secret construction work over the last week at the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
Russian officers controlling the area won’t give access to Ukrainian staff running the plant or monitors from the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog that would allow them to see what the Russians are doing, Energoatom said Tuesday in a statement.
„Destruction of these containers as a result of explosion will lead to a radiation accident and radiation contamination of several hundred square kilometers (miles) of the adjacent territory”, the company said.
It called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to assess what was going on.
The U.N. Security Council held closed-door consultations Tuesday about the dirty-bomb allegations at Russia’s request.
President Vladimir Putin has not spoken publicly about the dirty bomb allegations but on Tuesday said Russia needed to streamline decision-making in relation to what it calls its „special military operation”.
Speaking at the first meeting of a new coordination council to manage the government’s work on the home front, Putin said increased coordination of government structures and regions was necessary.
