Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and three other counterparts from leading NATO members on October 23 amid growing concern that the Kremlin could escalate its war in Ukraine as it suffers defeats.
Shoigu’s call with Austin was his second in three days. The two had gone months without speaking and have now had just three calls since Russia unleashed a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
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Shoigu also held phone calls with Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, and French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu.
In those three calls, Shoigu conveyed "concerns about possible provocations by Ukraine with the use of a 'dirty bomb,'" the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. The ministry provided no evidence to support its alleged concerns and the statements did not provide further details.
Western defense officials rejected Shoigu’s comments as a Russian pretext for escalation.
A dirty bomb is a mix of explosives, such as dynamite, with radioactive powder or pellets. When the dynamite or other explosives are set off, the blast carries radioactive material into the surrounding area.
At the same time, the Kremlin-controlled RIA Novosti news agency claimed without citing any sources that Ukraine could detonate a low-yield nuclear bomb on its own territory in order to blame it on Russia and thereby damage Moscow’s global standing.
Russia has already seriously undermined its own international image, especially in the West, with its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, atrocities against Ukrainian civilians that some have called war crimes, the indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and its mismanagement of its military campaign from day one.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the 1990s in exchange for a guarantee from Russia that its borders would remain sacrosanct, which Moscow violated in 2014 and again with its invasion in February. Thus, Russia is indirectly accusing Western nations of potentially supplying Ukraine with dirty bombs or low-yield nuclear bombs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sharply denounced Shoigu's statement, calling the allegation a Russian pretext for just such an attack.
"The world should react as harshly as possible," he said.
US National Security Council Spokeswoman Adrienne Watson called Shoigu's statement "transparently false" and said "the world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation."
The United Kingdom’s Ben Wallace “refuted" Russia's claims and warned that such allegations "should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation," Britain's Ministry of Defense said in a statement, noting that Moscow had requested the conversation.
SEE ALSO: Not Going Nuclear: Putin's Other Options For Escalation With The WestDara Massicot, a military expert at the Washington-based think tank RAND Corp, said the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement was disconcerting.
“This reads like Russian false flag groundwork. Troubling that it’s happening at the defense minister level,” she said in a tweet.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he would use any available means to defend territory he claims to have annexed from Ukraine. Experts have interpreted that to mean nuclear weapons.
Ukrainian forces are carrying out a counteroffensive that is pushing Russian forces out of the regions its forces occupied in the first months of the invasion.
Military experts say Ukraine, backed by Western conventional weapons and training, could win the war as Russian forces are stretched.
A Ukrainian victory could undermine Putin’s 23-year hold on power.