Another Kremlin Conspiracy: Ukraine Blamed for Radioactive Plot in Syria
Russian covert services have once again resorted to a clumsy information attack, launching a fake about the “sold” Ukrainian military property with radioactive materials in Syria.
The Gaze reports on this with reference to the message of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) on Telegram.
The “military property” fabricated by the Russians refers to a cheaply assembled container containing capsules labeled PU.94244U (plutonium) and U.92 (uranium).
Nevertheless, the container itself was decorated in a rather poor manner, as is the tradition of Russian special services. “They used unreadable Cyrillic text, blue tape to attach the Air Force logo, and serious errors in labeling,” the report says.
The triviality of this attempt to spread a hoax lies in the fact that one of the capsules is labeled “PU 94244U”. This is a rare isotope of plutonium, of which there are only a few grams in the Earth's crust. In addition, for some reason, there is a mechanical wristwatch inside the container.
The Russians are also trying to pass off a Soviet chemical intelligence device as one allegedly sold by the Ukrainian military in Syria.
"This is an attempt by the Kremlin to inflict a reputational blow to Ukraine in the eyes of the new government of the Syrian Arab Republic, Ukraine's international partners, and the IAEA. The aggressor state continues to manipulate the topic of global nuclear safety, to which the free world must react firmly," said Andriy Yusov, representative of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.
Russia already spread similar disinformation in 2023. It was then that a post appeared about the “intercepted Ukrainian container with plutonium.” “At that time, the Russians claimed that they had succeeded in preventing an attempt by the US intelligence services to accuse Russia of using chemical weapons in Syria,” the DIU noted in a statement.
It is worth noting that such propaganda was spread even before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The Center for Nonproliferation Studies provides an annotated chronology of Russia's accusations of using Ukrainian radioactive weapons, which were spread in the Russian media on the eve of the invasion, as well as the development of these accusations since then.
The study cites the example of when, back in 2022, the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel The Military Observer distributed screenshots from an allegedly Ukrainian video about the creation of a “dirty bomb.” This became the starting point for the narrative about radioactive weapons, which was later actively replicated by Russian sources. The source and authenticity of the footage remain unknown, and journalists have pointed out serious grammatical errors and signs of falsification.