Putin renews ‘dirty bomb’ claims, watches nuclear drill
He underlined that the 30-nation military organisation “will not be intimidated or deterred from supporting Ukraine’s right to self-defence for as long as it takes.”
Despite the Western dismissals, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted Moscow had information about “an ongoing preparation in Ukraine for such a terror attack”.
A Yars intercontinental ballistic missile is test-fired as part of Russia’s nuclear drills from a launch site in Plesetsk.Credit:AP
“We will continue to energetically inform the global community about what we know to persuade it to take action to prevent such irresponsible action by the regime in Kyiv,” Peskov told reporters.
Slovenia’s government said Russia has been engaging in a disinformation campaign about the “dirty bombs,” using a 2010 photo from the European Union country’s Agency for Radioactive Waste titled ‘Ukraine’s capacities to create the dirty bomb.’ The photo shows bags containing smoke detectors bearing inscriptions in Slovenian reading ‘radioaktivno’, or radioactive. The Slovenian government says the detectors contain a radioactive source but isn’t on of those listed below the photo in the Russian Foreign Ministry release. Slovenia’s government said on Twitter that its radioactive waste is stored safely and is not used for dirty bombs.
More conventional forms of warfare continued Wednesday in Ukraine.
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Ukrainian officials said the fighting in more than 40 Ukrainian villages killed at least two civilians and sustained the terror that forces people into air raid shelters each night.
Russian forces launched five rockets, 30 air strikes and more than 100 multiple-launch rocket system attacks on Ukrainian targets, the Ukrainian armed forces general staff said.
A Ukrainian official reported that a Russian strike hit a gas station in the city of Dnipro, killing two people, including a 25-year-old pregnant woman in a car with her husband. He was reported seriously hurt in the late Tuesday attack, which occurred just after the couple had refuelled their vehicle. The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentyn Reznichenko, said three other people were hospitalised.
Ukrainian saboteurs attacked a police station in the southern port and industrial city of Kherson with grenades on Wednesday, Russian-installed officials reported on social media. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the attack in the city bearing the same name as the region that Russia has illegally annexed.
Missiles struck buildings and neighbourhoods in the southern port city of Mykolaiv on Tuesday, though it remained unclear if there were any casualties, according to local authorities. More strikes were reported early Wednesday.
AP
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