MOSCOW, December 21. /TASS/. The threat of the Kiev regime creating a "dirty bomb" exists because Ukraine has the necessary capacity to do this, Russian Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said at a press conference on Wednesday.
"Of course, theoretically, Ukraine has the necessary potential to create a ‘dirty bomb.’ Not much effort is needed for this, especially because Ukraine, since Soviet times, has been an advanced country in the nuclear sphere, as it possesses a great deal of technology and knowledge. The fact that Kiev did have such plans - here I tend to trust our officials at the Defense Ministry, they know what they are talking about. In principle, there is indeed such a threat," he said, replying to a question on the matter.
"Somebody at the IAEA told us that there are almost five thousand facilities with radioactive substances on Ukrainian soil where technically it is possible to create a ‘dirty’ bomb. It is necessary to keep something else in mind - the IAEA is only involved with nuclear materials such as uranium, plutonium and thorium while radioactive substances, such as cobalt or cesium, are not in its purview," the diplomat added.
Additionally, Ulyanov commented on the IAEA’s inspection in Ukraine which allegedly had not detected any capabilities of developing a "dirty bomb." "As for these three inspections. Indeed, inspectors went there, the length of their stay at each facility was no longer than 8-9 hours. While in case of an ore mining and processing enterprise in Zheltye Vody in the Dnepropetrovsk region or the Yuzhmash design bureau, these are huge enterprises, a week is not enough to inspect them entirely," he added.
That said, the Russian envoy stressed that it is premature to talk about the inspection’s results. "Here, analysts and commentators are a little hasty with judgments and assessments. The thing is that in addition to a visual examination, the main part of the inspection is related to selecting samples and analyzing them. Such samples were collected and sent to certified laboratories in several countries and there has not yet been any information on the results. This is a rather lengthy process, maybe in a month or two or maybe next week but until the results are made public it is premature to assert that nothing has been found. Indeed, the inspectors did not detect any traces of unstated nuclear activity or of repurposing nuclear material but this is only part of [their] tasks," he noted.