Russia earlier accused France and the UK of seeking to arm Ukraine with a dirty bomb
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has said he would accept nuclear weapons from Britain and France “with pleasure,” while stressing that no such offer had ever been made.
In an interview with Sky News released on Friday, Zelensky responded to a statement by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) accusing France and the UK of having plans to smuggle components and technologies to enable Kiev to build a radioactive dirty bomb or, potentially, a nuclear weapon.
A dirty bomb – a conventional explosive device laced with radioactive material – does not have the destructive force of a nuclear warhead but can contaminate large areas.
The SVR suggested that if Ukraine gets hold of a radioactive weapon, it “would be able to aspire to more advantageous terms of ceasing the hostilities.” Both the UK and France have dismissed the accusation.
Asked whether Kiev was indeed covertly seeking nuclear weapons through its Western partners, Zelensky noted that he would have taken them “with pleasure,” but noted he “didn’t have propositions.” In 2022, days before the start of the full-scale conflict with Russia, the Ukrainian leader suggested that the country might reconsider its non-nuclear status.
Commenting on Zelensky’s enthusiasm about the prospect of being handed weapons of mass destruction, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS news agency that the Ukrainian had “confessed what London and Paris have stubbornly kept silent about.”
Meanwhile, Kirill Dmitriev, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin and a key negotiator in the Ukraine settlement process, suggested that the Sky News interviewer had “urgently interrupted” Zelensky to stop him from completing an answer on nuclear weapons.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked that the intelligence shared by the SVR would be “taken into account” in ongoing peace negotiations, adding that the public release could have thwarted “crazy” nuclear plans.
