(United Nations) Russia repeated on Tuesday before the UN Security Council its accusations against Ukraine, which it said was preparing a “dirty bomb”, saying it “doubted” that inspections by the International Security Agency Atomic Energy (IAEA) can prove that this is not the case.
Posted at 2:26 p.m.
At the initiative of Russia, which had sent a letter to this effect to the Council and to the UN Secretary General, the Security Council discussed on Tuesday behind closed doors these allegations against Kyiv, already swept aside by Ukraine and the Westerners.
“We think this is a very serious danger, a serious threat,” Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy said after the meeting.
“Ukraine has the capabilities and Ukraine has the motives to do so, because the regime of (Volodymyr) Zelensky wants to avoid defeat and wants to involve NATO in a direct confrontation with Russia,” he said. he added, pointing to two structures capable of manufacturing these “unsophisticated” bombs in Ukraine.
Moscow raised the charges for the first time on Sunday in telephone conversations between Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his American, French, British and Turkish counterparts, referring to “possible provocations by Ukraine with recourse to a “dirty bomb”.
Paris, London and Washington together lambasted Moscow’s “false” statements on Monday. “No one would be fooled by an attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation,” they stressed in a joint statement.
“We have neither seen nor heard any new evidence at this private meeting,” Deputy British Ambassador James Kariuki said Tuesday after the Security Council meeting, denouncing Russia’s “disinformation”.
“Ukraine has nothing to hide, IAEA inspectors are on the way,” he added.
At the request of Kyiv, which requested the dispatch of experts, the IAEA confirmed on Monday a visit “in the coming days” to the two structures concerned.
“I really doubt that it is possible to be 100% certain that there are no activities of this kind, even after this visit”, commented Dmitry Polyanskiy, considering that it was “very difficult to detect activities aimed at creating these dirty bombs”.
A radiological bomb or “dirty bomb” is made up of conventional explosives surrounded by radioactive materials intended to be scattered into dust at the time of the explosion.
Two more Security Council meetings are scheduled for this week at Russia’s request. One on Wednesday to explain the reasons for its refusal of a UN investigation into Iranian drones supplied, according to the West, to Moscow in its war against Ukraine; the other Thursday on Russian accusations of the presence of biological weapons in Ukraine.