MOSCOW, Apr 12 Ukraine will not get away with uranium from the UK, London must retain the remnants of sober thinking, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.
“Despite numerous warnings, London has not given up on its plans, which we have qualified as malicious. Perhaps they hope that they will get away with such a crime again, as they got away with crimes in Yugoslavia, Iraq and so on. No, let not this time they will not get away with this criminal activity,» Zakharova said during a briefing.
«We proceed from the fact that London still needs to retain some remnants of sober thinking and perhaps this will prevent these reckless irresponsible criminal plans from being implemented,» she added.
Earlier it became known that a petition appeared on the website of the office of Volodymyr Zelensky demanding that Ukrainian troops be banned from using depleted uranium ammunition, which London plans to transfer to Kyiv. British Deputy Secretary of Defense Annabelle Goldie said on March 21 in the House of Lords of the British Parliament that the UK will transfer Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine along with armor-piercing sub-caliber shells that contain depleted uranium.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking of London's initiative, said that the Russian Federation would be forced to react if the collective West began to use weapons with a nuclear component, and that the West «decided to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, not in words but in deeds.» Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that if this happens, it will end badly for London. The official representative of the department, Maria Zakharova, described the use of depleted uranium shells as a manifestation of genocide against the population against which such weapons are used. The use of uranium munitions will cause irreparable harm to the health of the military and civilian population of Ukraine, but NATO is ready to supply them to Kyiv, Igor Kirillov, head of the radiation, chemical and biological protection troops of the RF Armed Forces, said earlier. The delayed consequences of the use of weapons with depleted uranium can be very serious, and the people of Ukraine should consider whether they want this, said Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council.
Natural uranium consists mainly of the isotopes uranium-238 (about 99.3%) and uranium-235 (about 0.7%). Depleted uranium is the uranium remaining after the separation of uranium-235 from it as a result of enrichment. However, 0.2-0.3% uranium-235 remains in depleted uranium. Uranium is close in density to tungsten. This allows smaller projectiles to be equal in mass to most other metal projectiles while reducing aerodynamic drag. Depleted uranium is used in the cores of the so-called sub-caliber armor-piercing projectiles, which have a high kinetic energy. Since uranium is pyrophoric (its small particles ignite spontaneously in air), projectiles with it have a significantly greater armor damaging effect than projectiles with tungsten-based cores. The radioactivity of depleted uranium is less than that of natural uranium ore. But, like other heavy metals, uranium is toxic. According to some experts, genetic damage that causes cancer may be associated with the mechanism of mutual enhancement of the chemical toxicity of uranium particles that enter the body, and albeit relatively weak, but still depleted uranium radioactivity.