Russia warns of Ukraine ‘dirty bomb’ provocation
Defense chief’s claim is rejected
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia’s defense chief on Sunday alleged that Ukraine was preparing a “provocation” involving a radioactive device, a stark claim that was strongly rejected by Ukrainian and British officials amid soaring tensions as Moscow struggles to stem Ukrainian advances in the south.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made the allegations in phone calls with his counterparts from the United States, Britain, France and Turkey.
Russia’s defense ministry said Mr. Shoigu voiced concern about “possible Ukrainian provocations involving a ‘dirty bomb,’” a device that uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste. It doesn’t have the devastating effect of a nuclear explosion, but it could expose broad areas to radioactive contamination.
Russian authorities repeatedly have made allegations that Ukraine could detonate a dirty bomb in a false flag attack and blame it on Moscow. Ukrainian authorities, in turn, have accused the Kremlin of hatching such a plan.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace strongly rejected Mr. Shoigu’s claim and warned Moscow against using it as a pretext for escalation.
The British Ministry of Defense noted that Mr. Shoigu in a call with Mr. Wallace “alleged that Ukraine was planning actions facilitated by Western countries, including the U.K., to escalate the conflict in Ukraine.”
“The Defense Secretary refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation,” the ministry said.
The U.S. also rejected Mr. Shoigu’s “transparently false allegations,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. “The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asserted the international community was unlikely to believe Mr. Shoigu’s claims, and implied that Moscow was setting the stage for deploying a radioactive device
on Ukrainian soil.
“If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means only one thing: that Russia has already prepared all of it,” Mr. Zelenskyy said in a televised address Sunday evening.
Ukraine’s top diplomat, Dmytro Kuleba, said his country neither has dirty
bombs nor plans to acquire them.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak also dismissed Mr. Shoigu’s claims as an “absolute and quite predictable absurdity from those who believe that they blatantly lie and make people believe in that.”
The French Ministry of the Armed Forces said that Mr. Shoigu told his counterpart, Sebastien Lecornu, that the situation in Ukraine was rapidly worsening and “trending towards uncontrollable escalation.”
Mr. Shoigu’s call with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was the second in three days. A U.S. official familiar with the Sunday call said that Russian allegations of a Ukraine provocation came up. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private call.
The mention of the dirty bomb threat in Mr. Shoigu’s calls with his counterparts seemed to indicate the threat of such an attack has risen to
an unprecedented level.
“It appears that there is a shared feeling that the tensions have approached the level that could raise the real threat for all,” Fyodor Lukyanov, the Kremlin-connected head of the Council for Foreign and Defense policies, a Moscow-based group of top foreign affairs experts, said in a commentary on Mr. Shoigu’s phone calls.
Elsewhere, Russian authorities reported that they are building defensive positions in occupied areas of Ukraine and border regions of Russia, reflecting fears that Ukrainian forces may attack along new sections of the 620-mile front line of the war, which enters its ninth month on Monday.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has focused its counteroffensive mostly on the Kherson region. Their relentless artillery strikes cut the main crossings across the Dnieper River, which bisects the southern region, leaving Russian troops on the west bank short of supplies and vulnerable to encirclement.
Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Russian-installed regional administration in Kherson, said Sunday in a radio interview that Russian defensive lines “have been reinforced and the situation has remained stable” since local officials strongly encouraged all residents of the region’s capital and nearby areas Saturday to evacuate by ferry to the river’s east bank.
The region is one of four that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month and put under Russian martial law on Thursday. Kherson city has been in Russian hands since the early days of the war, but Ukraine’s forces have made advances toward reclaiming it.
About 20,000 Kherson residents have moved to places on the east bank of the Dnieper River, the Kremlinbacked regional administration reported.
The Ukrainian military said Sunday that Russia’s military also withdrew its officers from areas on the west bank, leaving newly mobilized, inexperienced forces.
The Ukrainian claim could not be independently verified.
As Ukraine presses south after liberating the Kharkiv region in the north last month, authorities in the western Russian provinces bordering northeastern Ukraine appeared jittery.
The governor of Russia’s Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, said Sunday that two defensive lines have been built and a third one would be finished by Nov. 5.
Defensive lines were also established in the Belgorod region, Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said. He posted pictures Saturday of lines of pyramid-shaped concrete blocks to block the movement of armored vehicles.