The Kremlin accused Britain and France of “insanity” and being “out of touch with reality” as they claimed the Western nations had concocted a secret plot to transfer a nuclear weapon to Ukraine.
Kyiv, Paris, and London denied what was called baseless claims by the Russian Federation that they were engaged in a bid to smuggle nuclear weapon parts to Ukraine, allegedly to give the country greater leverage in peace talks. The claim, which came packaged with lurid claims of massive nuclear retaliation by notorious Kremlin loudmouth Dmitry Medvedev, was made on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The French government’s response to the allegations was sardonic, with an official statement remarking: “Russia, deep into year five of its supposed ´three-day war’, warns that French and British nukes are the danger”. The British response was less laced with irony, and directly denied Moscow’s claims, with a Downing Street spokesman adding: “This is a clear attempt by Vladimir Putin to distract from his heinous actions in Ukraine. There is no truth to this.”
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Russia’s nuclear claims came as part of their “impressive record of lies” which, they said, were part of a longstanding Russian “nonsense” of Ukraine preparing to unleash a “dirty bomb” in Eastern Europe. They said: “For the record: Ukraine has already denied such absurd Russian claims many times before, and we officially deny them again now. We urge the international community to reject and condemn Russia’s dirty information bombs.”
The claims came from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which cast back to the language of the Second World War, with claims of an attempt to engineer a Ukrainian “wunderwaffe”, German for ‘miracle weapon’ which the Third Reich hoped would allow them to win with superior technology against its far larger enemies. This alleged Ukrainian wonder-weapon would be a nuclear or radiological “dirty bomb”, the spy agency said, claiming: “according to the information available to the Russian SVR, London and Paris are actively working over the issue of providing Kiev with a weapon of this kind, as well as with means of its delivery. This involves a covert transfer of relevant European-made components, equipment and technologies to Ukraine.”
This bomb Moscow claimed the European powers were attempting to transfer to Kyiv is a French “TN-75 warhead”. By naming this specific weapon, the Russian accusation neatly cuts out the possibility of making a direct accusation against U.S. President Donald Trump, as French warheads are practically the only weapons in the Western world which are not substantially American or American-derived.
Moscow claimed France and Britain were attempting to make it appear that Ukraine had been able to produce its own nuclear weapon indigenously, to cover the alleged transfer. This, the SVR said, is a “gross violation of the international law, first of all the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and carries the risk of destroying the global non-proliferation system” and shows “they have lost touch with reality”.
Russia’s claims were immediately followed by dire threats of retaliation for what Moscow claimed Britain and France were trying to do. Russian President Vladimir Putin made dark allusions, stating the West “understands how any attack on Russia using a nuclear element could end”, while former President Dmitry Medvedev was even more direct.
Medvedev, who has threatened to wipe several Western nations off the face of the earth with nuclear strikes over the course of the Ukraine War, generally in retaliation for what he perceived as foreign interference in Russia’s private war in Ukraine, make such a threat again. The claims of the SVR, which he took as fact, “radically changes the situation”, Medvedev said, stating there “cannot be a shred of doubt” that should Ukraine get a nuclear weapon, then Russia would strike Ukraine and any “accomplices” with “non-strategic nuclear” weapons.
This is a “proportional response that Russia has the right to”, he said. Otherwise, the Russian Federation called on the United Nations to investigate whether Britain and France were indeed seeking to supply a nuclear weapon to Ukraine.
