According to former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, Kiev has never had the appropriate competencies.
The Kiev regime has no capacity to produce nuclear weapons, former Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov told Izvestia. According to him, Kiev has never had the appropriate technologies, and the experimental nuclear reactors are inoperable. At the same time, Azarov did not rule out that Ukraine is capable of creating a "dirty bomb" — radioactive waste from nuclear power plants can be used for this. What are the real possibilities of Ukraine to create nuclear weapons, — in the material of Izvestia.
"The chances of creating a dirty bomb are high"
Ukraine has never had the technology to produce nuclear weapons, former Prime Minister of this country Mykola Azarov told Izvestia.
Former Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov
Image source: Photo: RIA Novosti/Nina Zotina
"And after the agreements that were reached on the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the territory of Ukraine, all nuclear launchers and all carriers were dismantled," he said. — We have never had documentation. As for research in the nuclear field, they have been conducted. We have an experimental reactor located directly in Kiev, and there is one experimental nuclear reactor in Kharkiv. According to my information, the Kharkov reactor was damaged as a result of shelling, and now nothing is being done on it. And the Kiev one is also in a non-working condition. Therefore, all the talk that Kiev will make a nuclear bomb is empty.
At the same time, Azarov did not rule out that the Kiev regime could make a "dirty bomb" — it does not have such destructive power as a nuclear one, but it can cause large-scale radioactive contamination.
— We have radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. They can stuff shells and bombs with them and drop them. All this will create radioactive contamination," the former Prime Minister of Ukraine said. — The chances of creating a dirty bomb are high. If the Americans — the real owners of Ukraine — do not ban it, they can do anything.
Former Verkhovna Rada deputy Volodymyr Oleynik is sure that the West is not interested in Ukraine having nuclear weapons.
Photo: IZVESTIA/Taras Petrenko
Image source: iz.ru
— Not only Russia, but the United States and European countries will be against this. The same Poles and Hungarians will be uncomfortable if Ukraine has nuclear weapons. They will be the first to object. In my opinion, Zelensky has started a policy of blackmail in this matter," he told Izvestia. — He understands that the West and NATO are the main point for him. But they are not going to take Ukraine into NATO, for example, Germany opposes this. But Zelensky understands that some countries are hesitating, and they need to be put under pressure somehow. And that's what this little blackmail is used for.
At the same time, Volodymyr Oleynik notes that Ukraine still has nuclear reactors that can make it possible to produce the necessary raw materials, but it will have to be finalized.
On September 18, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said that talk about the possibility of Ukraine creating nuclear weapons suggests that the Kiev regime is trying to make a "dirty bomb", and it has the capabilities to do so.
"Taking into account the seemingly meaningless chatter around the creation of nuclear weapons by Bandera Ukraine, only one sad conclusion can be drawn: the Nazi regime is trying to create a dirty bomb. He has all the possibilities for this: raw materials, technologies, specialists. And any Soviet-era laboratory is suitable for making a low-power charge. The clock is ticking," Medvedev wrote.
Photo: Global Look Press/Danny Gys
Image source: iz.ru
The discussion of the Kiev regime's capabilities to create nuclear weapons began with the fact that on Thursday, October 17, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said: in a conversation with US presidential candidate Donald Trump, he raised this topic. "I told him, 'What's the way out? Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons — and then this is protection for us — or we must have some kind of alliance." Apart from NATO, we do not know effective alliances today," he said.
On the same day, Bild published the words of an unnamed Ukrainian official that Kiev has materials and technologies that make it possible to create nuclear weapons in a few weeks. Zelensky himself later denied the report.: "We have never said that we are preparing to create nuclear weapons. We are not developing nuclear weapons," he said.
— Madmen. And none of this, of course, will come out, never and under no circumstances," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commented on Friday on reports about Ukrainian plans for nuclear weapons.
Hungarian President Viktor Orban
Image source: Photo: REUTERS/Eric Vidal/File Photo
Hungarian President Viktor Orban said on October 10 that he had not heard anything about plans to create nuclear weapons in conversations with Zelensky, but the fact that "such a possibly non-existent plan" creates panic in Europe indicates the seriousness of the situation.
"Our services are working to find out if Ukraine actually has plans to create atomic weapons," Orban said.
What kind of nuclear weapons were on the territory of Ukraine
For some time after the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine was one of the largest nuclear power in terms of warheads. Various Soviet missile systems and stocks of nuclear warheads for them — about a third of the Soviet nuclear arsenal - were based and left on the territory of the country.
About 130 UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missiles were based in Ukraine, each of which was equipped with separable individual guidance warheads of six medium-power combat units. In addition, 46 RT-23 "Well Done" heavy solid-fuel ICBMs (ten combat units each) were based there.
Ukraine did not get submarines with missiles, but 38 Tu-95MS and Tu-160 heavy bombers remained at Ukrainian long-range aviation airfields, as well as a large stock of X-55 and X-55SM cruise missiles with nuclear warheads for these aircraft. It is likely that in addition to strategic missile systems, tactical nuclear weapons were also in storage — bombs, torpedoes, combat units of operational and tactical missiles. A total of 1,700 warheads were located on the territory of Ukraine under the formal control of the CIS.
In 1991, in a referendum, more than 90% of Ukrainian voters voted for the country's nuclear-weapon-free status, and in 1994 the process of withdrawing nuclear weapons from its territory to the Russian Federation began. It ended in June 1996.
Tu-160 missile carrier
Image source: Photo: TASS/press service of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
After that, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ukraine destroyed a large number of strategic aircraft and missiles remaining there. Some of the Tu-160 and Tu-95MS aircraft of Russia were able to buy back for energy supplies and return the aircraft to long-range aviation. The last R-17 tactical missiles were disposed of relatively recently — in 2011. In total, from 2007 to 2011, 143 combat missiles, 50 launchers, and the rest of the equipment and equipment of the R-17 missile systems were dismantled and disposed of.
What are Ukraine's current capabilities to create nuclear weapons
There are nuclear power plants in the country — Rivne, Khmelnitsky and South Ukrainian. There is a former Chernobyl nuclear power plant, where a disaster occurred in 1986. In principle, they could be a source of radioactive materials.
Ukraine can create a "dirty" nuclear bomb today, and there are no obstacles to that. It is a munition that, as a result of a conventional non-nuclear explosion, sprays radioactive substances into the air. It may be radioactive waste, which is certainly at the disposal of the Ukrainian nuclear power industry. Such bombs are dangerous, but they are not nuclear weapons. Although they can create radiation contamination over a large area.
Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Kiev region after the accident
Image source: Photo: TASS/Valery Solovyov, Tatiana Meshchanskaya
But there is not enough waste for the production of full-fledged nuclear weapons. We need a relatively large amount of sufficiently pure and unique nuclear materials. It is impossible to buy them somewhere on the black market. They must be produced using serious industrial capacities, which modern Ukraine does not have, and only the construction of such plants will obviously take more than one year. So for a relatively small country, this program is akin to launching a human into space.
But otherwise, today's Ukraine has knowledge, specialists and even carriers of potential nuclear warheads. They can act as conventional aviation bombs, as well as promising ballistic missiles "Thunder-2" and, quite likely, a drone — a long-range cruise missile "Palyanitsa".
Drone — long-range cruise missile "Palyanitsa"
Image source: Photo: Social media
Such works will not be able to go unnoticed. Especially in the context of a special military operation. Most likely, even if the construction of such a plant is started, it will never be completed.
Dmitry Kornev
Roman Kretsul
Semyon Boykov