Russia has downplayed the risk of a dirty bomb plot in Ukraine just days after claiming Ukrainian officials planned to stage such an attack following a chorus of NATO warnings rejecting the allegation.
“We have got what we wanted,” Russian deputy ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters at the United Nations. “If this all does not happen, I do not mind people saying that Russia is crying wolf because we are speaking about a terrible disaster that might potentially threaten the whole Earth.”
That sanguine tone makes a marked contrast with charges leveled over the first two days of the week as Russian military officials claimed that Ukrainian officials had reached the “final stage” of a scheme to detonate a dirty bomb and blame Moscow. Western officials denounced the allegation as “transparently false” and aired their suspicions that the Kremlin had a similar plan in mind.
“Russia often accuses others of what they intend to do themselves,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday while visiting the USS George H.W. Bush, the American aircraft carrier leading NATO’s Neptune Strike exercises in the Mediterranean. “We have seen this pattern before, from Syria to Ukraine. Russia must not use false pretexts for further escalation. The world is watching closely.”
via joemiller