The provocation is aimed at accusing Russia of violating the Convention on Nuclear Safety, the Defence Ministry says
Kiev is preparing a provocation to accuse Russia of striking radiation-dangerous facilities in Ukraine with the subsequent leakage of radioactive substances and contamination of the area, the Russian Defence Ministry has said. It said that the Ukrainian authorities wanted to accuse Moscow of gross violation of the Convention on Nuclear Safety.
To prepare the provocation, the ministry said, several containers with radioactive substances were delivered to Ukraine bypassing customs control. They will be used, the Defence Ministry said in a statement, ‘to stage a local contamination of the area near one of the radiation hazardous facilities controlled by the Kiev regime’.
This is not the first time that the Defence Ministry has said that Ukraine is preparing provocations against Russia. Thus, in early February, the ministry said that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was planning to blow up the buildings of a narcological and oncological dispensary and a local hospital in Kramatorsk (which is under Kiev’s control) and then hold the Russian military responsible for this.
In October, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted ‘trustworthy sources from different countries’ as saying that Ukraine was preparing a provocation with a ‘dirty bomb’, the explosion of which would result in radioactive contamination of the area. The purpose of the provocation, the agency claimed, was to accuse Russia of using weapons of mass destruction. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu later informed his colleagues from the US, UK, France, China, India and other countries about the preparation of the provocation.
The Ukrainian president’s office called the information about the preparation of a provocation with a ‘dirty bomb’ ‘absurd’. Washington, London and Paris denied the Russian side’s claims. In November, experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that they had found no signs of the development of a ‘dirty bomb’ in Ukraine.