Russia insisted Tuesday before the UN Security Council that Ukraine was planning to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the war zone, but Western diplomats said Moscow had not provided any evidence to support that claim.
The Security Council met behind closed doors to discuss Moscow’s claim, first released on Sunday, that it believed Ukraine was detonating a primitive nuclear bomb in the war zone and blamed Russian forces for it.
“We think it’s a very serious threat,” Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said after the meeting.
“Ukraine has every reason to do so, because we know that the Zelenskyy regime wants, firstly, to avoid defeat and secondly, to engage NATO in a direct clash with Russia,” he said, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Such a scheme is “very dangerous, but it will be profitable for the Zelenskyi regime to stay in power,” Polyanskiy said.
“A dirty bomb is not an elaborate device that needs to be made. It’s actually a shell of radioactive waste. And it’s very difficult to see the activity of making these dirty bombs,” he added.
James Kariuki, the British Ambassador to the United Nations, dismissed Russia’s claim.
“We have seen and heard no new evidence during this private meeting,” he said, calling the Russian claim “manifestly false.”
“Ukraine was clear, they have nothing to hide,” Kariuki said.
He said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were on their way to Ukraine after being invited by Kyiv to inspect its nuclear facilities.
“We should be clear that this is pure Russian misinformation,” he said.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made the first “dirty bomb” claim in talks with NATO colleagues on Sunday.
Dirty bombs are crude explosives that can spew dangerous nuclear, chemical, or biological materials.
The United States, France and Britain issued a joint statement rejecting Shoigu’s claim, suggesting it was a plan by Moscow to foment war.
“The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation,” they said.
