Russia may resort to nuclear blackmail to force Ukraine to surrender, says Ukrainian intelligence
Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, a
military intelligence agency under the Ministry of Defense, believes that
Russia may be
preparing a nuclear false flag attack, agency head Kyrylo Budanov said in an
interview with the Ukraine 24 television channel on March 11.
Budanov said Russia was exploring options for conducting "nuclear blackmail" by staging a nuclear catastrophe and blaming Ukraine for the consequences.
“We have information about the development of two options. Which one they go with depends solely on them,” Budanov said.
The first option could involve the large-scale burning of radioactive forests in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, which would give rise to a large radioactive cloud that would then move with the direction of the wind.
The second option would involve the use of artillery against a nuclear storage facility, with similar consequences.
The military intelligence head believes that in both cases, Russia’s propaganda would be identical - falsely claiming that these catastrophes had been caused by “Nazi” or “neo-Nazi” Ukrainian armed groups.
The Chornobyl nuclear power plant was seized by Russian invasion forces on Feb. 24, with subsequent reports stating that the technicians and personnel at the plant had been taking hostage and prevented from doing work critical to the maintenance of the reactor, as well as preventing them from being rotated - exposing the staff to possibly unsafe amounts of radioactivity.
Later, on March 4, the Russian military shelled the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and also later captured it.
Both plants are under the control of the invading Russian forces.
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