The war in Ukraine is being fought on many fronts, including information. Throughout the Russian invasion it has been seen how Moscow and Kyiv have pointed to each other as being responsible for their attacks, but lately there has been another dynamic: Russia warns of an action threatened by the Ukrainian forces and Ukraine responds that it is actually the enemy who intends to carry it out as a false flag attack. The Kajovka dam has been threatened for days, now both sides are accusing each other of wanting to use a dirty bomb (a conventional explosive with radioactive elements) in Ukraine.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu yesterday called his counterparts in France, the United States, the United Kingdom and Turkey about the possibility that Ukraine used this weapon on its own territory and then blamed Russia for it. But the foreign ministers of these countries, with the exception of the Turkish minister, dismissed it while urging Moscow not to use the claim as a pretext to escalate the eight-month war.
For his part, the president of Ukraine, Volodímir Zelenski, considers that only "one subject" can use nuclear weapons in that area of Europe: Putin. His foreign minister, Dmitro Kuleba, rejected the accusation as "absurd" and "dangerous", adding: "Russians often accuse others of what they themselves plan." Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov spoke in the same direction, "it is an element of the Kremlin's usual tactic, one in which Russian criminals try to preemptively blame the victim of aggression for their own crime," he added. before thanking Ukraine's partners for correctly noticing "this dangerous Russian nonsense."
"The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation," the ministers said in a joint statement on Monday. They also assured that they remain committed to continuing to support Ukraine's efforts to defend its territory for as long as necessary.
Calling his counterparts in recent days and saying that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb, Minister Shoigu "probably tried to stop or suspend Western military aid to Ukraine and possibly weaken the NATO alliance," according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), based in the United States.
However, ISW analysts see it as "unlikely the Kremlin is preparing an imminent false flag dirty bomb attack," and blame Shoigu's reporting as part of a long-running Russian information campaign. Ukraine does not possess nuclear weapons, while Russia has said it could protect its territory with its nuclear arsenal.
Such intense communication at the highest level of defense between Moscow and four capitals of key NATO countries comes at a very sensitive time when there are doubts about the real Russian intentions in Kherson, the southern city where the Russian occupiers are evacuating to the civilian population. In an interview published yesterday by Le Parisien newspaper, Ukraine's ambassador in Paris, Vadim Omelchenko, said that it could not be excluded that Russia would attack Kherson with a tactical nuclear weapon at the moment when Ukrainian troops entered the city.
