SSlovenia has accused Russia of using an old photo of smoke detectors in its alleged evidence of Ukraine’s “dirty bomb”. A photo published by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the online network Twitter comes from the Slovenian nuclear waste disposal authority ARAO and was taken in 2010, Dragan Barbutovski, adviser to the Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob, told the AFP news agency on Wednesday. The photo was “misused without ARAO’s knowledge,” added Barbutovski.
Russia’s Radioactive, Biological and Chemicals Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said on Monday that Ukraine was “in the final stages” of making a “dirty bomb”. According to Russian information, “two Ukrainian facilities received specific instructions to produce the so-called dirty bomb,” Kirillov said.
“Smoke alarm for general use”
He accompanied his statements with a picture published on Twitter, which showed, among other things, a container with the Slovenian word “Radioaktivno” on it and which, according to Russian information, contained nuclear waste.
In fact, this image was used by ARAO for explanatory purposes for “presentations for specialist audiences and the general public”, explained the head of the Slovenian authority, Sandi Virsek. The container pictured would have contained “general use smoke detectors” – and no radioactive material whatsoever.
The former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia has been a member of the EU and NATO since 2004. The country operates a nuclear power plant in Krsko, near the Croatian border, and the nuclear waste generated there is kept safe, ARAO said.
Notwithstanding this, on Wednesday Russia renewed its accusations that Kyiv was planning to use a “dirty bomb”. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke to his colleagues in Beijing and Delhi on Wednesday. Meanwhile, India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh warned Shoigu that neither side in the conflict in Ukraine should use a nuclear bomb, the Defense Ministry in New Delhi said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described the Russian airstrikes as an unprecedented attack on his country’s energy supply. He warned of impending widespread power cuts across the country and called on the population to save energy. In Kyiv he received the first African head of state since the beginning of the war and at the same time received an alleged offer of negotiations from Moscow.
“Russian terrorists have created such difficult conditions for our energy workers that no one in Europe has ever seen or experienced anything like it,” Zelenskyi said in his daily video address on Wednesday, referring to the Russian airstrikes. In addition, he criticized what he said was insufficient implementation of the grain agreement. Russia continues to impede the export of Ukrainian food by sea. 175 ships were therefore stuck in traffic waiting to be cleared. “It is evident that Russia intends to exacerbate the global food crisis once again in order to bring back the threat of starvation.”