Western intelligence agencies could struggle to detect Russia‘s potential preparations for a nuclear “dirty bomb attack” in Ukraine, President Joe Biden’s team has acknowledged.
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“We’ll watch this as best we can,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “If an actor wanted to do a dirty bomb attack, you know, a lot of our ability to detect [it] would be determined by a range of factors. … There’s an awful lot that goes into how you can best monitor something like that.”
Russian military officials stoked global anxiety about a potential nuclear attack in Ukraine by accusing Ukrainian officials of plotting to orchestrate a dirty bomb incident. The “absurd” allegation, as a Western official characterize it, ignited a round of speculation about Moscow’s plans. The threat presents a new test for the U.S. and British intelligence agencies that predicted the Russian invasion in February and now are being relied upon to sound the alarm if Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to use nuclear weapons.
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“We have to believe U.S. intel; they have been right about Russian moves,” a senior European official told the Washington Examiner. “[U.S. officials] were absolutely well informed also about the beginning of the war. The U.S. and the [United Kingdom] were the only ones who knew exactly when Russians are ready, when they would start to move their diplomatic representations away in time. All the rest, they didn’t move [their ambassadors] because they were self-assured. They just didn’t know their assessment was wrong.”
Russian officials could obscure their intentions by shortening “the length of time that the perpetrator was going to prepare for, or the communications that would [be] involved” in planning it, Kirby said.
“All I can assure you is that we are taking it seriously and we are monitoring as best we can,” he added.
The question arises as Russia is set to conduct its annual strategic nuclear exercises.
“Normally, these exercises are used for testing out their procedures and equipment up to the level of the [intercontinental ballistic] missiles,” a second senior European official told the Washington Examiner.
Those missiles, known as ICBMs, are designed to carry nuclear warheads for the longest-range strikes — the sort that raised the specter of mutually assured destruction during the Cold War. A dirty bomb uses “conventional explosives to expand and scatter and to release agents which can cause more widespread and long-standing injuries beyond just the explosive blasts,” as Kirby defined it. The clear differences between those kinds of operations don’t eliminate the opportunity for Russia to take advantage of the drills to make implicit threats.
“They will use this exercise for messaging in the context of this war in Ukraine,” the second senior European official said. “Of course, for the general public, it’s very difficult to understand the difference of strategic [nuclear weapons] versus tactical or even just dirty nuclear material. Most likely … the Western intelligence [agencies] can distinguish the activities that are related to the strategic forces exercise and any potential something awful happening in Ukraine.”
Western leaders have acknowledged their concerns that Moscow is setting the stage to conduct such an attack and then blame Kyiv.
“What makes us concerned is that this is part of a pattern we have seen before from Russia — in Syria but also at the start of the war or just before the war started in February,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Politico. “And that is that Russia is accusing others [of] doing what they intend to do themselves.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu aired the allegation in a series of phone calls with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other Western officials, and the claim has been amplified by Russian military officials and diplomats.
“The purpose of the provocation is to accuse Russia of using weapons of mass destruction in the Ukrainian theater of operations, thus launching a major anti-Russian campaign around the world aimed at undermining trust towards Moscow,” Russian Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov said Monday, per state media.
The internal logic of that accusation is analogous to the charges that the Kremlin leveled in February, prior to the campaign to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. In February, Kremlin officials denied any intention of launching a full-scale war in Ukraine even as they positioned Russian forces to launch the attack, and then Putin claimed that the assault was necessary to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians from the central government. In March, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have found bioweapon laboratories in eastern Ukraine.
“It studied possibilities of spreading particularly dangerous infections through migratory birds,” Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia told the U.N. Security Council on March 11. “Besides, there were experiments to study spreading of dangerous infectious diseases by ectoparasites — fleas and lice.”
Kirby echoed Stoltenberg’s concern about Russia’s record of making allegations that anticipate “things that they were planning to do,” but he cautioned against assuming that the dirty bomb allegations will prove to be the latest example of such a tactic.
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“We continue to see nothing in the way of preparations by the Russian side for the use of nuclear weapons and nothing with respect to the potential use for a dirty bomb,” Kirby said. “We are watching this as best we can. We are monitoring this as closely as we can.”
