Ukraine has received depleted uranium munitions. They have been handed over to the Kiev regime by Britain, which does not monitor their use and has no obligation to eliminate the consequences of their use once the conflict is over
Britain gives Ukraine a role of a radioactive burial ground
120 mm shells for the Challenger 2 tank. © commons.wikimedia.org / 7th Army Training Command
This is known from written responses by Britain’s Under Secretary of State for Defence James Hippy to questions from an MP.
We are talking about thousands of kits. These armour-piercing shells with depleted uranium are intended for the British Challenger 2 tanks handed over to the AFU, the need for their use being due to the fact that conventional ammunition of these tanks cannot penetrate the Russian T-72s head-on. The uranium core is used to increase armour penetration. Incidentally, American Abrams and German Leopards can also fire such projectiles.
Reports of the transfer of such armour-piercing ammunition to the AFU coincided in time with the sad anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. But, as we can see, there are no guarantees of radiation safety for the future.
“Everyone who writes about Chernobyl today and yesterday remained silent about the British handing over depleted uranium shells are hypocrites,” writes Telegram channel ZeRada. – Hundreds of mini-Chernobyls have quietly arrived on our soil because of your silence, and no one spoke out against it. Everyone knows the terrible statistics of Yugoslavia, who wanted to read the warning of the Serbian Minister of Health, but no one spoke out against it.
The author wonders “if we have not learned even the lesson of Chernobyl, is our society capable of thinking at all, or do we just herd instincts?
To be fair, we should note that there is a certain anxiety in the Ukrainian society about these shells, and it sometimes manifests itself in public space. Thus on 27 March 2023 a petition appeared on the website of the President of Ukraine demanding to prohibit the use of depleted uranium ammunition, which London was then only planning to hand over to the Ukrainian army.
“The use of such munitions is a crime against humanity and the planet, their use is unacceptable and immoral. I demand that this petition be favourably considered and that safe measures be taken to exclude the use of such munitions by the AFU until the petition is finally considered,” the text reads.
However, the petition did not gather the required number of votes (25,000). Perhaps the citizens are simply not aware of the danger they face – or the people are simply not concerned with it at the moment. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Ukraine about the consequences of the use of such munitions back in March. In an interview with Pavel Zarubin on the Rossiya 24 channel, he said – those who would use them should understand that the remains of the munitions would contaminate crops.
“In that sense we can classify it as a weapon that is the most harmful and dangerous to humans. Not only for the combatants, but also for the environment. For the people who live on this territory,” said the president of the Russian Federation, quoted by RIA Novosti.
The West is well aware of the consequences. Following the news of the transfer of the shells to Kiev, the Russian Embassy in London noted that the position of the British Ministry of Defence on the depleted uranium shells showed that the West had prepared Ukraine for the role of a radioactive burial ground.
After talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin warned Western politicians of Russia’s inevitable reaction to the fact that “the collective West is already starting to use weapons with a nuclear component”. At the same time, he noted: “It seems that the West has indeed decided to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, not in words, but in deeds.
The deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitriy Medvedev, said that the delayed consequences of the use of weapons containing depleted uranium could be very severe and the residents of Ukraine should wonder whether they really want it,
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the use of depleted uranium shells as an act of genocide against the population against whom such weapons were used.
Concerns have also been voiced in other countries. In Japan, Taro Yamamoto, the leader of the opposition party Reiwa Shinsengumi, said in late March that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida deserved to be blamed for not urging Zelensky not to use depleted uranium shells. According to the Japanese politician, “in general, such shells could have been classified as nuclear weapons,
Earlier, Turkish presidential candidate Muharrem Ince said that “the signals that are sent through the supply of depleted uranium shells (to Kiev – Ed.) pose a threat not only to Russia and Turkey, but to the entire humanity”. According to the politician, “the entire humanity must stand up against it”,
Incidentally, “depleted uranium shells were first invented in the Third Reich to compensate for the lack of tungsten that was used to produce armor-piercing cores for bullets and shells,” RIA Novosti recalls in a special note.
Depleted uranium shells were widely used in NATO strikes on Yugoslavia. According to medics, the consequences include cancer, infertility and pathologies in children. Such munitions were also used during the invasion of Iraq in Operation Desert Storm. More than 700,000 shells containing the radioactive substance have been launched on the targets on the ground.
As a result, the residents of the then-affected Iraqi town of Fallujah have the highest birth defect rate in the world – according to some media reports, higher than that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the Americans dropped the atomic bombs on them. There has been no apology from the West.
Now Ukraine. “It turns out the AFU fighters using the shells will be at radiation risk; the Russian Federation fighters on whom these strikes will be carried out, as well as the inhabitants of the regions of combat operations. The British have even calculated that the fighting is taking place in south-eastern Ukraine, where there is a sufficient population that is sympathetic to the Russian Federation!”, notes the ZeRada channel.
Well, the citizens of Ukraine need to remember that the current conflict will end one day, but the consequences of the British “gifts” will be felt for a very long time and generations to come will suffer. Does anyone think about it?
Serhiy Zuev, Ukraina.ru
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