![]() 24, Russia’s army chief Valery Gerasimov repeated the claim in phone calls to NATO nations. Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter that his country is a committed member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and neither has nor plans to acquire "dirty bombs." He added that Shoigu’s claims "are as absurd as they are dangerous."īut Russian officials continue to repeat Shoigu’s claim about a "dirty bomb" in recent days. 23 rejecting what it called "transparently false allegations" from Shoigu, the Russian defense minister. The foreign ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom and France issued a joint statement Oct. The agency has repeatedly certified that all nuclear materials in Ukraine are meant for peaceful applications, according to Podvig. The agency also said it inspected one of the sites one month ago and found "no undeclared nuclear activities or material." 24 that its inspectors have visited those sites regularly. Russia mentioned two specific nuclear sites in its accusations, but the International Atomic Energy Agency said Oct. 25 that the Kremlin had "intelligence information" suggesting that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had ordered the construction of a "dirty bomb," but he provided no evidence to back the claim. Russian ambassador Dimitry Polyanskiy said Oct. Pavel Podvig, an expert in the nuclear forces of Russia and former Soviet states, told PolitiFact that the claim that Ukraine still has nuclear weapons is "completely false." The country has not tried to develop them before or after the start of the invasion, Podvig said, and "there is absolutely no evidence that Ukraine has ever worked on a ‘dirty bomb.’" Ukraine also dismantled its nuclear missiles and destroyed its nuclear missile silos.Īccording to the fact sheet, the small quantity of highly enriched uranium still present in Ukraine "is intended for specific scientific purposes" and "is well below the amount needed to produce a nuclear device." Ukraine does not have "uranium enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing capabilities" nor "substantial quantities of separated plutonium." But after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Ukraine signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and transferred the weapons to Russia by 1996. The Soviet military kept nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory during the Cold War, according to a June 2022 fact sheet by the U.S. Nine countries in the world are known to have nuclear bombs: Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea, according to a January 2022 fact sheet by the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan organization in Washington, D.C., that promotes arms control. Its nuclear materials are now used for peaceful purposes, such as academic research and nuclear forensics. Ukraine also dismantled or destroyed its nuclear missiles and silos. The country used to have Soviet-era nuclear weapons but returned them to Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. 19 tweet by BBC Monitoring journalist Francis Scarr, who summarized in English what was said in Russian in the TV clip.Ī BBC spokesperson said Scarr "reports on the output of Russian TV" and that the tweet "reported a statement made on Russian state-controlled TV, and attributed the statement to that source." The spokesperson noted that "BBC Monitoring’s activities include investigating and exposing disinformation."Ĭontrary to Russia’s repeated claims, Ukraine has neither a nuclear bomb nor a "dirty bomb," according to experts and watchdogs. The Instagram post’s text and the footage match an Oct. ![]() (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.) The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. Ukraine has a nuclear bomb primed in Mykolaiv which it will detonate and then blame on Russia so that the US has a justification for getting directly involved in the war and launching missiles on Russia." 21 Instagram post included footage from a Russian TV show and featured text saying, "Today on Russian TV. Similar allegations have circulated on social media.Īn Oct. They are easier to make and considerably less deadly than nuclear weapons, but they can contaminate targeted areas with radioactive particles and cause panic. "Dirty bombs" use conventional explosives to spread radioactive material, according to a fact sheet by the U.S. 23, when Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu called his counterparts in the United States, the United Kingdom and France to say that Ukraine is preparing a "provocation" with a radiological device known as a "dirty bomb." Since invading Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly claimed that Ukraine is going to detonate a nuclear bomb on its own territory.
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