The West could secretly be helping Ukraine to make a so-called 'dirty' nuclear device to potentially use against Russia, Gunnar Beck, a former member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany party, has told RT.
In an interview on Saturday, Beck commented on a report by Russian military journalist Marat Khairullin, who claimed that Kiev was planning “a nuclear false flag – an explosion of a dirty atomic bomb” which would target “storage sites of spent nuclear fuel of a nuclear power plant.”
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has categorically denied the claim, calling it “dangerous lies.”
Commenting on the dirty bomb allegation, Beck said that if such a device were used, it would “undoubtedly be a further escalation,” especially “if it were involved in an attack on Europe’s largest nuclear plant,” referring to Russia’s Zaporozhye NPP.
He also suggested that while Western media and officials insist that Kiev can prevail over Moscow, “countries on the brink of victory don’t have to use dirty nuclear bombs,” and that such a method would be “unprecedented.”
“I’m still skeptical whether it will actually happen,” the ex-MEP acknowledged.
He noted that the alleged plan to detonate a dirty bomb could be used by Kiev to persuade the West to increase its commitments to Ukraine in terms of additional arms supplies, or even send in ground troops.
If the reports about the weapon are true, “obviously, there is a possibility that Ukraine was aided” by the West in building a dirty bomb, since its creation requires a certain level of technological sophistication, Beck said. At the same time, he stressed that Western involvement is not confirmed at this point.
A dirty bomb is a device that combines a conventional explosive with radioactive materials. While it cannot match the destructive power of a real nuclear warhead, its detonation could result in the radioactive contamination of a large area.
Russia has on several occasions accused Ukraine of considering a plan to detonate a dirty nuclear bomb and pin the blame on Moscow to drum up Western support for the country and unleash a powerful smear campaign.
Russian officials have said that Kiev – which controls several fully operational nuclear power plants – has the required fissile material to stage such an attack.