Minister Shoigu alleged that Ukraine was planning actions facilitated by Western countries, including the UK, to escalate the conflict in Ukraine.
The Defence Secretary refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation.
Shoigu is also reported to have had similar calls with the French and Turkish defence ministers in the last day. The “actions” and “escalation” he’s talking about are the accusations that Ukraine is ready to detonate a dirty bomb. IMO it’s a bit worrying that the story is being repeated at such a high and official level.
Grifman
19539
Ukraine is pioneering anti-drone tactics, is getting increasingly successful:
I though Ukraine was a marionette in the hands of NATO but turns out Ukrainians really were the mastermind behind it all!
So I suppose this means that Russia is preparing to use a dirty bomb and blame it on Ukraine? They may be searching for ways to use a WMD as a means of escalation, but need one that they could plausibly accuse Ukraine of launching. Obviously Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons (and probably no chemical weapons), but they do have conventional explosives and a large supply of radioactive material.
So Russia is going to blame Ukraine and Ukraine is going to blame Russia. And hell, even if they were right and Ukraine for whatever reason were to detonate one, then you’re still going to get each side blaming the other. Absent any glaringly obvious intelligence which pins it incontrovertibly on the actual offender, all it’s going to do is escalate the situation. Russia’s claims of Ukraine wanting to turn international attitudes against them is kind of stupid. I think the sides have already been chosen and I don’t see them changing barring something absolutely devastating (and even then I doubt it).
Russia doesn’t care much for your attitude towards them. I think with some perverted logic if you are a crumbling regime you want your citizens to think you’re either fighting an evil regime capable of using nukes on other people, OR you live under a regime that is willing to nuke their own cities if it feels like it.
So maybe they’ve identified the nuclear threat as their best chance of weakening Western support for Ukraine (and maybe they’re right). In which case this is just another channel for bullshit propaganda.
But it does worry me that they might be poisoning the well of direct ministry to ministry contacts with this crap, because those are the channels used to resolve incidents and stop them turning into escalations (as happened only a few weeks ago with the RAF / Russian AF confrontation over the Black Sea.)
And it does worry me that a real regime insider like Shoigu is the source of this, rather than random talking heads on Propaganda TV.
spiffy
19545
It might be their way of boiling the frog. If Russia knows NATO would respond to a tac nuke with overwhelming conventional force and lose Russia their war, muddying the waters with a dirty bomb that no one can definitively claim might stall any retaliations until the world has come to terms with things going nuclear, or enough so that Russia can ratchet it up with their threats, given now we know Russia isn’t bluffing about radioactive and nuclear usage, even as they deny, deny, deny.
jpinard
19546
Why do people keep taking about limiting Russia escalating the war? Russia has nothing to escalate too outside of nukes, and if that happens they’re done. So it feels like tip toeing around Russian escalation; is pointless and does nothing to help end the war faster. We should be giving Ukraine longer range missiles, artillery, and drones because like I said, Russia can’t escalate this war more than they already have without losing it faster.
abrandt
19547
Because people are worried about that bit with the final escalation where everyone loses really fast.
schurem
19548
I aint so worried about that.
Putin doesn’t want his gold plated palace to go up in a ball of nuclear fire. The general wants to fuck his secretary one more time, he’ll tell the dictator to rethink it a little more. The colonel wants his son to live, so he takes very very long processing the order until it mayhaps gets rescinded. The captain wants to see his wife again, so he whips out all of the regulations too. The sergeant kicks the missile and goes ‘see, sir? Missile broken, can not fly, first repair, da?’
Nobody wants to die in nuclear fire. That shit aint happening.
RichVR
19549
To be clear, Ukraine has no nuclear weapons, right? Do they even have fissionable materials? Like for the basic dirty bomb? Does anyone believe that they would do that to their own country?
They have nuclear power plants, so I have to assume they could get the materials for a dirty bomb if they wanted. (Edit: but they do not have nuclear weapons, no.)
But since Ukraine’s whole shtick* is that they depend on the US + allies for money and equipment, setting off a dirty bomb would be just unfathomably stupid for them, even on top of the fact that it would (presumably) be in their own country. I don’t think they’ve come anywhere close to demonstrating that level of stupidity.
*OK, it’s only half their shtick, the other half is actually fighting a war really quite impressively.
schurem
19551
Of course not, it’s complete and utter horseshit.
abrandt
19552
I certainly don’t think the probability of it happening is very high, nobody wants it to happen. But i don’t think we can safely assume it’ll never happen so we’re free to escalate away. Only takes one really unfortunate series of events for it to happen. And once it does we can’t save scum our way out of it.
Janster
19553
If they don’t want anymore western weapons, I guess a dirty bomb would do nicely…
So its a silly notion. Its hard getting much info from Kherson, but I think the frontlines are moving and rapidly aswell. However pro-Putind dudes say that they are reinforcing it hard…
If the blow the damn, they will never be able to get Kherson back tho…so I wonder
Apparently, most of Crimea is also supplied with drinking water only from sources at the dam. Unless they are VERY confident they can maintain infrastructure and water supply pipelines from the east, destroying the dam would also be a scorched-earth measure that might mean they can’t garrison and hold half of Crimea as well.
I mean if the war was bogged down and Ukraine was losing, just maybe it would make sense for Russia to dream up this scenario that Ukraine is going to detonate a dirty bomb (on its own soil no less). But when Ukraine is basically meat-grinding all Russians arriving at the front and gaining ground, the allegation is just ludicrous.
Houngan
19556
Largest nuclear power plant in Europe means that they would have all the dirty bomb material you could ask for. But, having a lawnmower means I have all the “burning down an orphanage” material I could ask for. As Clapton sang, it’s in the way that you use it.
antlers
19557
Russia has an entire cold-war superpower arsenal to play with, so they could escalate to poison gas, biio-weapons or as discussed dirty bombs short of nukes.
