Sky News: London calls depleted uranium a standard component of munitions

MOSCOW, March 22 – RIA Novosti. The UK Ministry of Defense sought to justify the possible supply of depleted uranium-containing ammunition to Ukraine, the channel reported. . weather.

On Tuesday, British Deputy Secretary of Defense Annabelle Goldie announced that Britain would hand over depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine.

Commenting on Goldie’s words, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that if the collective West began using weapons with nuclear components, Russia would have to react, and that the West had decided to fight Russia “not by word, but to the last Ukrainian deed.” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated that the British initiative has taken one more step, adding that these steps “are less and less”. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that London was disoriented in terms of its actions and “how these actions undermine strategic stability in the world”, noting that Britain was ready to take not only risks but also war crimes.

The British Ministry of Defense has confirmed in a new statement that it will send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, adding that the British Army has been using the substance in their shells for “decades”, Sky News reports. Quoting the statement, the channel said, “This is a standard component that has nothing to do with nuclear weapons or potential.”

The first use of depleted uranium in tank shells began in Nazi Germany due to the more intense shortage of tungsten. In the 1970s, the development of such shells began in the United States to combat new Soviet tanks. To date, they are part of the ammunition of the American Abrams tanks, they can also be used by the German Leopard 2 and the British Challenger 2. The American armed forces used depleted uranium shells in Operation Desert Storm during the invasion bombing of Yugoslavia. As Suad Al-Azzavi, a researcher at the Colorado School of Mines in Iraq USA in 2003, noted that the US use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium in Iraq resulted in a six-fold increase in the number of cancer cases in those locations.

Yuri Brazhnikov, former deputy head of the Ministry of Emergencies of Russia, a member of the governing group of the international coalition “Focus”, which provided humanitarian aid to the people of Yugoslavia in 1999, told RIA Novosti that the exposure dose is gamma radiation measured directly on the tip surface by the DRG-OGT device. rate is 530 -560 microR/h, which is 45 times higher than the natural radiation background for this area. According to Brazhnikov, the use of depleted uranium munitions could quickly lead to an environmental disaster in Ukraine, especially given that many regions of Ukraine were already exposed to radiation after the Chernobyl accident.