UNITED NATIONS/KYIV (Reuters) -- Russia doubled down on a warning that Ukraine is preparing to use a “dirty bomb” on its own territory, an assertion dismissed by the West and Kyiv as false, and was expected to bring the issue to the UN Security Council later on Tuesday.
Moscow sent a letter detailing its allegations about Kyiv to the United Nations late on Monday, and diplomats said Russia planned to raise the issue at a closed meeting with the Security Council on Tuesday.
“We will regard the use of the dirty bomb by the Kyiv regime as an act of nuclear terrorism,” Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council in the letter, seen by Reuters.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Russia’s accusation was a sign that Moscow - which has threatened to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine - was planning such an attack and was preparing to shift the blame to Ukraine.
Top Russian officials had phoned their Western counterparts on Sunday and Monday to air their suspicions.
Russia’s defense ministry said the aim of a “dirty bomb” attack by Ukraine would be to blame Moscow for the resulting radioactive contamination, which Russia had begun preparing for.
The UN nuclear agency said it was preparing to send inspectors to two unidentified Ukrainian sites at Kyiv’s request, both already subject to its inspections, in an apparent response to Russia’s “dirty bomb” claim.
Russia’s state news agency RIA has identified what it said were the two sites involved in the operation - the Eastern Mineral Enrichment Plant in the central Dnipropetrovsk region and the Institute for Nuclear Research in Kyiv.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier arrived in Ukraine on Tuesday on his first visit since Russia invaded on Feb. 24 and would meet Zelensky, German broadcaster ntv reported, as Berlin hosted what it said was a conference on a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild Ukraine.
Zelensky told the conference via video link that Russian rockets and drones had destroyed more than a third of his country’s energy sector, but that Kyiv had yet to receive “a single cent” towards a fast recovery plan worth $17 billion.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen cited the World Bank as putting the cost of rebuilding at 350 billion euros ($345 billion).