Russia’s defence 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 Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu made the allegations in phone calls with his counterparts from the United States, Britain, France and Turkey.
Russia’s defence ministry said Mr Shoigu voiced concern about “possible Ukrainian provocations involving a ‘dirty bomb,’” a device that uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste. It does not 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.
A statement on Defence Secretary Ben Wallace's call with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu: pic.twitter.com/BbQ9muxKeC
Advertisement— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) October 23, 2022
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace strongly rejected Mr Shoigu’s claim and warned Moscow against using it as a pretext for escalation.
The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) noted that Mr Shoigu in a call with Wallace “alleged that Ukraine was planning actions facilitated by Western countries, including the UK, to escalate the conflict in Ukraine”.
“The Defence Secretary refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation,” the ministry said.
“The Defence Secretary also reiterated UK and wider international support for Ukraine and desire to de-escalate this conflict.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 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 Zelensky said in a televised address on Sunday evening.
Ukraine’s top diplomat, Dmytro Kuleba, said his country neither has dirty bombs nor plans to acquire them.
The French Ministry of the Armed Forces said 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 US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin was the second in three days.
A US official familiar with Sunday’s call said Russian allegations of a Ukraine provocation came up.
The mention of the dirty bomb threat in Mr Shoigu’s calls 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,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the Kremlin-connected head of the Council for Foreign and Defence policies, a Moscow-based group of top foreign affairs experts.
Elsewhere, Russian authorities reported they were 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 counter-offensive 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 on 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 Kremlin-backed regional administration reported.
The Ukrainian military said on Sunday that Russia’s military also withdrew its officers from areas on the west bank, leaving newly mobilised, 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 north-eastern Ukraine appeared jittery.
The governor of Russia’s Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, said on Sunday that two defensive lines have been built and a third one would be finished by November 5.
Defensive lines were also established in the Belgorod region, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. He posted pictures on Saturday of lines of pyramid-shaped concrete to block the movement of armoured vehicles.
More defensive positions were being built in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire Russian businessman, said. Mr 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 Mr Putin illegally annexed last month.
Mr Prigozhin posted images on Wednesday showing a section of newly built defences and trench systems south-east of the town of Kreminna.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 23 October 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/zmOYBPFXFn
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/L0bV87iWiz— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) October 23, 2022
The MoD said on Sunday “the project suggests Russia is making a significant effort to prepare defences in depth behind the current front line, likely to deter any rapid Ukrainian counteroffensives”.
Russia’s forces captured Luhansk several months ago. Pro-Moscow separatists declared independent republics in the region and neighbouring Donetsk eight years ago, and Mr Putin made controlling all of both provinces a goal at the war’s outset.
The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington, said on Sunday that Russia’s latest strategy of targeting power plants appeared aimed at diminishing Ukrainians’ will to fight and forcing the government in Kyiv to devote more resources to protecting civilians and energy infrastructure.
It said the effort was unlikely to damage Ukrainian morale but would have significant economic impacts.
Nine regions across Ukraine, from Odesa in the south-west to Kharkiv in the north-east, saw more attacks targeting energy and other critical infrastructure over the past day, the Ukrainian army’s general staff said.
It reported a total of 25 Russian air strikes and more than 100 missile and artillery strikes around Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russian S-300 missile strikes overnight hit a residential neighbourhood in the city of Mykolaiv, injuring three people, according to the Ukrainian military’s southern command.
Two apartment buildings, a playground and a warehouse were damaged or destroyed, it said in a Facebook post.
