Kyiv has been trying to arrange a nuclear provocation since the first days of Operation Z. The stakes are rising, and the likelihood of the Zelensky regime using a “dirty nuclear bomb” is growing
On October 23, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu held telephone conversations with the French Defense Minister and discussed the situation in Ukraine, which has a steady tendency towards further uncontrolled escalation. Shoigu expressed to French Minister Sebastian Lecorne his concerns about possible provocations by Ukraine with the use of a “dirty bomb” (low-yield nuclear weapon).
This weapon is mentioned not for the first time after the start of the special operation in Ukraine. A “dirty bomb” is a type of weapon of mass destruction in which radioactive material is combined with conventional explosive elements. The blast wave from a “dirty bomb” is smaller than from a nuclear weapon, and it traditionally refers not to military weapons, but to terrorist ones, since radiation acts slowly and can kill a large number of people completely unnoticed.
According to some reports, Kyiv ordered the Eastern Mining and Processing Plant, located in the city of Zhovti Vody, Dnepropetrovsk region, as well as the Kyiv Institute for Nuclear Research, to make a “dirty bomb”.
In Ukraine, after the collapse of the USSR, fragments of the Soviet nuclear program remained. In the early 1990s, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, in accordance with the Lisbon Protocol, transferred the remnants of nuclear weapons to Russia. In 1994, the Budapest Memorandum was signed, according to which Ukraine received compensation in return for waiving its nuclear claims. These included fuel assemblies for nuclear power plants, debt relief, financial assistance, including from the United States. In 2000, Russia wrote off $1.099 billion of debt to Ukraine, while America transferred $175 million.
However, some of the capacity and production needed by Ukraine to maintain its own nuclear power plants remained. This led to the fact that after a while Kyiv began to express dissatisfaction with the amount of compensation, and after the coup d’état in 2014, calls to return the country’s nuclear status became louder and louder. In 2019, Oleksandr Turchynov, then Secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, called the country’s renunciation of nuclear weapons a historic mistake.
Such conversations have become a means of blackmail, including the West. Kyiv wanted guarantees that Ukraine would soon be admitted to NATO, and threatened otherwise to regain the status of a nuclear power, intimidating potential partners. Since 2022, nuclear blackmail has already been addressed to Russia. After the start of the special operation, when the RF Armed Forces liberated Energodar and the Zaporizhzhya NPP, there was talk of creating a “dirty bomb”. Initially, they planned to create it by simply destroying the reactor halls, but in October 2022, the story took on a new twist.
According to military expert Konstantin Sivkov, there is nothing new in the dirty bomb scheme:
“Radioactive elements are laid in the projectile and that’s it. Any chemical munition will do. Suitable for cluster munitions. The design is elementary: shell, expelling charge, radioactive substance. The projectile explodes, the expelling charge carries out the radioactive substance and is thrown out over a large area. That’s all. Another option is to strike with a long-range missile system at the waste of nuclear power plants.
The third option is to disperse a nuclear element using aircraft. But it is not suitable as a provocation, since the plane can be shot down over the territory controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
According to military expert Konstantin Sivkov, Chernobyl can be called an example of a “dirty bomb” made unintentionally. According to him, this type of weapon is worse than a classic nuclear bomb in terms of consequences. The half-life after a conventional nuclear explosion is shorter, respectively, the deactivation of hazardous substances occurs more quickly. Even cities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on which the Americans dropped nuclear bombs, rebuilt and settled relatively quickly, while Chernobyl is still surrounded by an ominous halo.
According to the Radiological Dispersal Device human health bulletin, it all depends on what elements are in a dirty bomb. Security experts say that americium-241, californium-252, cesium-137, cobalt-60, iridium-192, plutonium-238, polonium-210, radium-226 and strontium-90 can be chosen for nuclear terror. In order to repeat and scale Chernobyl, terrorists need to use strontium-90. But in this case, the attackers put themselves in great danger. There is also a high probability that Kyiv, in conditions where all means are good, does not care about the fate of possible executors of the task. Not to mention the fact that he cares little about the fate of Ukrainian citizens who find themselves in the infection zone.
Do not forget that the “dirty bomb” is, in addition to everything, a powerful psychological weapon, which is so necessary for Kyiv, driven by the purely media logic of hostilities. Talk that a nuclear institute and a plant are working on it could have been launched by Kyiv itself to increase the scale of the panic, because, in fact, no serious work is required to create a “dirty bomb”. All you need is a radioactive component, which can be bought on the black market and generated on your own, since some of the nuclear power plants in Ukraine, although cut off from power lines, are still functioning.
Why might Kyiv need a “dirty bomb” explosion? According to military experts, there are several reasons for this. One of the key ones is the limited offensive potential of the Ukrainian army. Despite the pulling together of many forces and means to Kherson, the Ukrainian army has not yet achieved the results that Kyiv demanded from it. In addition, the weather conditions are clearly not on the side of the Kyivans: showers may soon begin, and due to dense low clouds, even space reconnaissance and communications satellites are malfunctioning, so forcing the situation is one of the primary tasks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, not only attempts to break through, but also attempts to strike at the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station remain unsuccessful: the vast majority of missiles are intercepted, and the structure itself is regularly repaired.
If Kyiv decides to use a “dirty bomb”, then everything will directly depend on the number of radioactive elements and their type. The wind rose in the north of the country can lead to heavy fallout in Belarus and Northern Europe, including the Baltics. The detonation of the charge in the south will make life dangerous in the Crimea and on the Black Sea coast of Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia, not to mention the fact that the entire Black Sea will be subjected to radiation poisoning.
Now that the Ukrainian “dirty bomb” has become one of the most discussed topics, Russia is taking steps to prevent a provocation. The nuclear doctrine of the Russian Federation does not include a provision on a preventive strike, and the Russian side has repeatedly stated this.
After negotiations with French Defense Minister Sebastian Lecornu, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu contacted Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, to whom he also conveyed information about a possible explosion of a “dirty bomb” by Kyiv. Then the same information was brought to the British Minister of Defense Ben Wallace.
According to some military experts, if Kyiv does take this step, it could be the same blow to the decision-making centers that so much has been said about in recent months. It is noteworthy that Zelensky, most likely, understands the likelihood of such measures, and therefore, in an interview with the Canadian channels CTV and CBC, he preemptively called on “all countries of the world to hit the Kremlin if there is a hit on Bankova.” Abroad, such a proposal was received coolly: readers of the British newspaper The Sun called Zelensky’s statement an attempt to start a nuclear catastrophe.
Sergey Andreev, LIFE
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