Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's article for Komsomolskaya Pravda (August 25, 2023)

Back in their day, the Nazis came up with the idea of using depleted uranium as an armour-piercing weapon. Facing a shortage of wolframite after its imports were cut off, the German Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer issued an order to use depleted uranium instead.

At the time, the danger of uranium as a weapon was not obvious, and all the data to this effect was viewed as controversial until the 1990s, when NATO troops employed depleted uranium munitions during their aggression against Yugoslavia in what turned out to be a horrific experiment. It demonstrated the actual consequences of its use for actual living beings.

In 2015-2017, the parliament of Italy, whose forces made the most active use of depleted uranium munitions during NATO’s aggression in the Balkans, released a 252-page report on the consequences of exposure to depleted uranium and radioactive thorium for the service personnel of the Italian Armed Forces. According to the study commissioned by the parliamentary commission, cancer rates increased several fold in places where depleted uranium munitions were used. Reports containing precise data on Italian military personnel who used depleted uranium munitions were also made public. Of the 7,500 people exposed to toxic substances and radiation, 372 died, which amounts to a mortality rate of 5 percent, or one in 20 people. It has to be noted that these people died painful deaths succumbing to renal dysfunction, lung cancer, bone marrow cancer, oesophageal cancer, degenerative skin disorders, Hodgkin's lymphoma, or leukaemia.

Russia warned people in Ukraine about this threat many times, but unfortunately it is about to materialise on the Ukrainian territory too. British and American supplies of radioactive and highly toxic depleted uranium munitions are turning Ukraine into a territory that is unsuitable for living. The radioactive contamination of soil is already underway, and there is objective data to this effect.

Here are the indicator for Ukraine’s Khmelnitsky Region. There was a substantial surge in radiation reported in May with indicators increasing from 80 nanosieverts all the way up to 140-160 nanosieverts. A similar spike in radiation was also reported around the same time in Poland’s eastern regions. In both cases, the explosion of depleted uranium munitions at a storage facility in Khmelnitsky was probably what caused the spikes.

In May, the local authorities even issued alerts containing guidelines on what to do in case radioactivity levels increase. Radioactivity levels dropped within a month, but this was still a classical fallout as gravitation forced radioactive particles down on the ground. It seems that all soil under the cloud that rose from the storage facility and the surrounding territories were exposed to radionuclides. Rehabilitating the soils will be a painstaking, lengthy, and costly undertaking.

Every warehouse with depleted uranium munitions and every tank carrying them can potentially lead to a surge in cancer rates, leaving behind deadly and toxic soils, and posing a mortal danger for all living being. Ukrainians must understand that the UK supplies them with a true poison, since there will be no getting away from tumours, and demand that depleted uranium munitions be shipped out of the country as quickly as possible.