West Rejects Russian Claim that Ukraine Plans a False-Flag Dirty Bomb

Western leaders have rejected a Russian claim that Kyiv is planning to set off a "dirty bomb" on Ukrainian soil.

"Our countries made clear that we all reject Russia’s transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory,” the French, UK, and U.S. governments said in a joint statement released Sunday evening.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu made the claim earlier in the day in conversations he had requested with each of the countries’ defense chiefs, the statement said.

Shoygu’s claims were also repeated in Russian state media. 

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who had also spoken with Shoygu on Friday, “rejected any pretext for Russian escalation and reaffirmed the value of continued communication amid Russia’s unlawful and unjustified war against Ukraine,” according to a Pentagon readout of the call.

In his own tweet, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called the allegations “as absurd as they are dangerous.” 

The Institute for the Study of War noted that Russian officials have made several similar false statements, beginning in the months before their February invasion of Ukraine.

“Shoigu’s claims further a longstanding Russian information campaign,” they wrote on Sunday.

The ISW analysts said Shoygu’s Sunday accusation did not alter their assessment that Russia is “unlikely to be preparing an imminent false-flag dirty bomb attack.” 

The calls occur as many in the West prepare for the possible use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine by Russian forces, a nuclear weapon test close to Ukraine, or some other incident. 

U.S. officials have said that Russian use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be “catastrophic” for the regime but have declined to go into specifics. 

“You think I would tell you?” U.S. President Joe Biden sarcastically asked “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley in September.