Ukraine’s Bluster About Making Nuclear Bomb If Trump Scraps US Aid is Desperate Blackmail

Reports claiming Ukraine could build a nuclear bomb within months if the US cuts off military aid are no more than "desperate blackmail," political and military analyst Sergey Poletaev told Sputnik.

Referencing a report on the matter published in Britain’s The Times, he speculated that it was "some kind of a hoax, and by all means not the first one."

“A month ago there was a similar false narrative pushed by Germany’s Bild, I think,” said the publicist, who specializes in Russian foreign policy and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

A rudimentary nuclear device could be developed using plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods taken from Ukrainian nuclear reactors, the UK outlet stated, citing a briefing paper prepared by researchers for Ukraine's Defense Ministry. It added that the technology could be similar to what was used to create the "Fat Man" plutonium implosion bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. The briefing document suggested that a bomb of this kind would boast about one-tenth the power of Fat Man.

Ukraine could create a dirty bomb, which is a regular bomb with radioactive materials added to it, and which does not produce a nuclear explosion, but creates radioactive contamination of the area, the pundit said.

"They can theoretically create something like this because they have radioactive waste at nuclear power plants. And they can somehow attach a TNT charge to it," Poletaev noted. But if talking about a Fat Man-type of bomb, then “absolutely not," he stressed.

"Fat Man is a plutonium bomb, and Ukraine has no plutonium. Ukraine does not possess enrichment technologies for the production of weapons-grade plutonium or the enrichment of uranium. The power reactors that Ukraine has do not produce plutonium or enrich it – they are purely energy-producing water-cooled reactors," the analyst explained.

While theoretically it might be possible to enrich uranium at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, he added, it has long been closed and dismantled, and it is impossible to restart it.

"Ukraine is completely incapable of creating an industry for the production of weapons-grade plutonium, or a closed technology for the production of nuclear weapons in general," Poletaev underscored.

Even if Ukraine had the technical, intellectual, and financial capabilities to do so, it would be very difficult to conceal the fact, he noted, citing the example of a country as closed as North Korea.

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Furthermore, the US made a deliberate effort to rid Ukraine, as well as Belarus and Kazakhstan, of nuclear weapons after the USSR's collapse, the expert said.

“They did it for a reason, because control over the spread of nuclear weapons around the world is in the interests of all nuclear powers – and the US first and foremost, and Russia as well. Nothing has changed since then. I don't know what would have to happen for the US to allow Ukraine to start developing nuclear weapons,” Poletaev said.

"Ukraine is committed to the NPT; we do not possess, develop, or intend to acquire nuclear weapons. Ukraine works closely with the IAEA and is fully transparent to its monitoring, which rules out the use of nuclear materials for military purposes,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in response to the recent media reports.

However, when presenting his so-called victory plan in Brussels in October, Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that he had told Donald Trump in September that unless Ukraine is part of NATO, it would pursue nuclear capabilities.

Ukraine transferred its arsenal of over 1,700 nuclear warheads to Russia in June 1996 in line with a Russian and US-proposed initiative. Ukraine had eliminated its delivery systems by 2001.

The memorandum committed Russia, the US, and Britain to "reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine," and from the use of armed force against the country "except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations."

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Ukraine’s Bluster About Making Nuclear Bomb If Trump Scraps US Aid is Desperate Blackmail - Analyst