Russia accuses Ukraine of seeking to acquire nuclear weapon with help from UK and France

Russia ⁠accused Ukraine on Tuesday of trying ⁠to obtain a nuclear weapon with help from Britain and France, an allegation Kyiv called an absurd lie.

A French foreign ministry spokesman said the allegation was “blatant disinformation”. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: “There’s no truth ‌to this.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously criticised Kyiv’s decision to give up its former Soviet nuclear arsenal in the 1990s without obtaining proper, binding security guarantees.

But Kyiv has said it does not seek to reacquire nuclear weapons, and respects all international treaties.

In a statement published on the fourth anniversary of the war, Russia’s ⁠SVR foreign intelligence service said Britain and France believed that Ukraine would be able to secure ‌more favourable terms for ending the war if it possessed “a nuclear bomb, or at least a so-called ‘dirty bomb’”.

It did not include documentary evidence to ‌back its assertion.