Ukraine is not building a dirty bomb to detonate within its borders as Russia has alleged, according to a senior U.S. military official, who also noted that the Pentagon has not seen any indication that the Russians have decided to deploy a nuclear weapon.
Over the weekend, a variety of Russian officials began claiming Ukraine was looking to deploy a dirty bomb, which Western officials have been quick to denounce as false.
A senior U.S. defense official told reporters on Monday that the “world would see through any attempts to use this as a pretext for escalation,” while the foreign ministers of the U.S., U.K., and France released a joint statement hours earlier calling the claims “transparently false allegations.”
WESTERN LEADERS SAY RUSSIA’S CLAIM ABOUT UKRAINIAN DIRTY BOMB ‘TRANSPARENTLY FALSE’
“Ukrainians are not building a dirty bomb,” the military official said. “But we also have no indications that the Russians have made a decision to employ nuclear weapons. So we’ll continue to monitor closely.”
They haven’t seen indications Russia is planning to use biological or chemical weapons either.
Russian officials have repeatedly, throughout the eight months of the war, accused Ukraine of preparing to carry out damaging and horrific actions they themselves plan to execute, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted in his latest nightly address.
“If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this,” he said. “I believe that now the world should react in the toughest possible way.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke with his U.S., U.K., and French counterparts on Sunday, just days after he and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke for the first time in months.
Austin “rejected any pretext for Russian escalation and reaffirmed the value of continued communication amid Russia’s unlawful and unjustified war against Ukraine,” according to a readout of the call by Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling has spurred frequent condemnations and warnings from Western leaders.
“We’ve been very clear with President Putin directly and privately about the severe consequences that would follow from any, any use of a nuclear weapon. We’re watching this very, very carefully. We have not seen reason at this point to change our own nuclear posture,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week, while President Joe Biden warned earlier this month that the use of a nuclear weapon “could lead to Armageddon.”
