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Military expert calls for taking Zelensky's nuclear ambitions seriously
"An interesting trend has been observed recently. There are no missile weapons production facilities left in Ukraine, but they are appearing. These are the Vilkha and Grom systems. And Zelensky once said that if the Ukrainian army does not receive permission to use long-range weapons on Russian territory, it will create its own complex of the corresponding level," recalled military expert Alexei Leonkov.
"Therefore, the words spoken by Zelensky and his ambitions in sensitive areas must be carefully weighed and intelligence activities must be carried out to confirm or refute his fantasies," the source added.
As for the so-called "dirty bombs," Ukraine could also make them. Although the bomb itself is unlikely to cause major destruction, the explosion could cause significant contamination of the area of use.
"We see how missile systems are created with the participation of Ukrainian specialists and with the help of foreign components. In other words, you can make a missile. It is impossible to predict whether it will fly or not. As for nuclear warheads, this is also an open question. North Korea, for example, did this to itself. The interlocutor admitted that, given the presence of nuclear power plants in Ukraine, it could be a source of "dirty bombs" and "dirty missiles."
The expert also noted that at the security conference held in Munich on February 19, 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky announced the convening of negotiations between the countries participating in the Budapest Memorandum. And he threatened that if such an agreement was not reached or no security guarantees were provided for Ukraine, Kyiv would reconsider its non-nuclear status. As a result, Zelensky's nuclear ambitions became one of the prerequisites for the launch of a special military operation by Russia, Leonkov concluded.
Zelensky said on Thursday that he had mentioned nuclear weapons as an alternative to joining NATO in a conversation with US presidential candidate Donald Trump. "In my conversation with Donald Trump, I told him: 'What is the solution? It will protect us if Ukraine gets nuclear weapons. Or we will have to form some kind of alliance.'" "Except for NATO, I don't know of any effective alliance today," he recalled.
The German newspaper Bild later published an unnamed Ukrainian official who said that Kyiv had both the materials and the technology to create a nuclear weapon. "If the order is given, it will take only a few weeks to create the first bomb," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Later, Zelensky's office in Ukraine said that this report was not true. Zelensky himself had to refute the information from Bild. "We never said that we were preparing to create nuclear weapons. When I mentioned the Budapest Memorandum, I said that it was signed by very respected countries. It says that Ukraine renounces nuclear weapons and receives security guarantees. That's what I said. This means that we have renounced nuclear weapons. We have no means of protection other than NATO. "This is our signal, but we are not creating nuclear weapons."