MOSCOW, April 27. /TASS/. Ukraine’s former prime minister (in 2010-2014) Nikolay Azarov has slammed as hypocrites those who on Wednesday wrote a lot about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster but at the same time completely ignored the transfer of depleted uranium shells from London to Kiev.

"All those who wrote about Chernobyl yesterday while staying silent the day before about Britain’s transfer of depleted uranium shells to Ukraine are hypocrites. Hundreds of mini-Chernobyls have quietly arrived in Ukraine, but no one spoke out against this. Everyone knows the terrible statistics of Yugoslavia, whose officials have repeatedly warned both the Ukrainians and the Kiev regime of the terrible consequences," Azarov wrote on Thursday on his page in social media.

On Tuesday, Britain’s Minister of State for Defense James Heappey confirmed in written replies to questions from the Scottish Alba party’s MP Kenny MacAskill that London had sent to Kiev thousands of shells for Challenger 2 tanks, including those with depleted uranium. He added that London did not monitor their use and had no obligations to eliminate the consequences of their use after the end of the conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that despite the fact that depleted uranium was not listed by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a radioactive element, there were confirmed facts and interviews with people who had suffered from the consequences of such projectiles in former Yugoslavia during NATO’s bombardments in 1999.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on March 21 that plans for supplies of depleted uranium shells showed the West's intention to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. He noted that Russia would be forced to respond to such moves. It has hundreds of thousands of such munitions, but has not used them yet, he added.