U.S., U.K. reject Russia’s ‘dirty bomb’ allegation
Russian 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 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, which launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine eight months ago Monday. Ukrainian authorities, in turn, have accused the Kremlin of hatching such a plan.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace strongly rejected Shoigu’s claim and warned Moscow against using it as a pretext for escalation. The British Ministry of Defense noted that Shoigu in a call with 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 defense secretary also reiterated U.K. and wider international support for Ukraine and desire to de-escalate this conflict.”
The U.S. also rejected 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.”
In a televised address Sunday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested 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,” Zelensky said.
The French Ministry of the Armed Forces said that Shoigu told his counterpart, Sebastien Lecornu, that the situation in Ukraine was rapidly worsening and “trending towards uncontrollable escalation.”
Shoigu’s call with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III 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 Shoigu’s calls with his counterparts seemed to indicate that 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 Policy, a Moscow-based group of top foreign affairs experts, said in a commentary.
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.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has focused its counteroffensive mostly on the Kherson region. Its relentless artillery strikes cut the main crossings of the Dnieper River, which bisects the southern region, leaving Russian troops on the west bank short on 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 martial law last week. 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 Kremlin-backed 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 that border 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 halt the movement of armored vehicles.
More defensive positions are being built in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, according to an announcement by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire Russian businessman dubbed “Putin’s chef.” Prigozhin owns the Wagner Group, a mercenary military company that has played a prominent role in the war.
He said his company was constructing a “Wagner line” in the Luhansk region, another of the Ukrainian provinces Putin illegally annexed last month. Prigozhin posted images Wednesday showing a section of newly built defenses and trench systems southeast of the town of Kreminna.
The Ukrainian army’s general staff reported 25 Russian airstrikes and more than 100 missile and artillery strikes targeting energy and other infrastructure around Ukraine over the last day.
