Kyiv, Ukraine — Ukraine’s nuclear power operator said on Tuesday that Russian forces were carrying out covert work at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, an activity that could shed light on Russia’s claims that the Ukrainian military is preparing a “provocation” involving a radioactive device.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made an unsubstantiated allegation that Ukraine was about to drop a so-called dirty bomb. Shoigu leveled the charge over the weekend in calls to his British, French, Turkish and American counterparts. Britain, France and the United States dismissed it outright as “transparently false”.
Ukraine also dismissed Moscow’s claim as an attempt to distract from the Kremlin’s own alleged plans to detonate a dirty bomb, which uses explosives to disperse radioactive waste in a bid to spread terror.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian state-owned company that operates the country’s four nuclear power plants, said Russian forces had carried out secret construction work over the past week at Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Russian officers controlling the area will not give access to Ukrainian personnel who run the plant or to UN atomic energy watchdog monitors that would allow them to see what the Russians are doing, Energoatom said Tuesday in a a statement.
Energoatom said it “assumes” that the Russians are “preparing a terrorist act using nuclear materials and radioactive waste stored in” the plant. fuel.
“The destruction of these containers following an explosion will lead to a radiological accident and radioactive contamination of several hundred square kilometers (miles) of the adjacent territory,” the company said.
He asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to assess what was happening.
The UN Security Council on Tuesday held closed consultations on the dirty bomb allegations at the request of Russia.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia sent a five-page letter to council members ahead of the meeting, saying that according to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian Institute for Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Kyiv Science and the Vostochniy Mining and Processing Plant “have received direct orders from (President Volodymyr) Zelensky’s regime to develop such a dirty bomb” and “work is in its final stages”.
Nebenzia said the ministry was also informed that this work “could be done with the support of Western countries.” And he warned that the authorities in Kyiv and their Western backers “will take full responsibility for all consequences” of using a “dirty bomb”, which Russia will consider “an act of nuclear terrorism”.
After the council meeting, journalists asked Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, what evidence Russia had that Zelensky had given the order to develop a “dirty bomb”. He replied, “This is intelligence information.”
“We shared it during our phone conversation with counterparts who have the necessary clearance level,” he said. “Those who wanted to understand that the threat is serious, they had every possibility to understand that. Those who want to dismiss it as Russian propaganda will do so anyway. »
Polyansky said the IAEA could send inspectors to investigate the “dirty bomb” allegations.
Britain’s deputy ambassador to the UN, James Kariuki, told reporters after the meeting that “we have not seen or heard any new evidence” and that the UK, France and the US have made it clear “that this is a transparent false allegation” and “pure Russian disinformation”. He said: “Ukraine has made it clear that it has nothing to hide” and “IAEA inspectors are on their way”.
In a related case, Russia has asked the Security Council to create a commission to investigate its allegations that the United States and Ukraine violate the convention banning the use of biological weapons in Ukrainian laboratories.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, its ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, claimed that secret US laboratories in Ukraine were engaged in biological warfare – a charge denied by states. States and Ukraine.
Russia on Thursday convened a Security Council meeting on Ukrainian biological laboratories and their allegations.
The Kremlin insisted its warning about an alleged Ukrainian plan to use a dirty bomb should be taken seriously and criticized Western nations for ignoring it.
The dismissal of Moscow’s warning is “unacceptable given the seriousness of the danger we talked about”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Peskov added: “We again underline the grave danger posed by the plans hatched by the Ukrainians.”
At the White House, US President Joe Biden was asked on Tuesday whether Russia was preparing to deploy a tactical nuclear weapon after claiming Ukraine would use a dirty bomb.
“I spent a lot of time today talking about it,” Biden told reporters.
The president was also asked if the allegations about a Ukrainian dirty bomb constituted a false flag operation.
“Let me say that Russia would be making an incredibly grave mistake if it used a tactical nuclear weapon,” Biden said. “I’m not giving you any guarantees yet that this is a false flag operation…but that would be a big, big mistake.”
Dirty bombs lack the devastating destruction of a nuclear explosion, but could expose large areas to radioactive contamination.
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