A think tank has made the shocking claim that Ukraine could drop a nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump’s government withdraws US military aid.
The country could build a basic device, using technology similar to that which brough about the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki, capable of bringing unfathomable destruction on Russia.
The claim was made in a paper by the Centre for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS), which has been shared with Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, reports The Sun.
However, the use of nuclear weapons in the Russia-Ukraine war could spell disaster not just for those countries but for the rest of earth as well.
It comes following a paper written in May by two of Trump’s former national security cheifs, where they said that the United States should only continue supplying weapons to Ukraine if Kyiv enters peace talks with Russia.
During his presidential campaign, the Apprentice star turned politician said he could end the war between the two nations “in a day”.
Amid uncertainty over the future, the CACDS – an influential Ukrainian think tank – has published a paper outlining the nuclear option. Their report claims that the nation is capable of building a basic device from plutonium using similar technology to that used by the “Fat Man” bomb, dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.
The country would have to rely on plutonium taken from spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors, lacking the time necessary to construct large facilities needed to enrich uranium, The Times reports. Ukraine has nine working reactions and a large amount of nuclear experts.
The think tank’s report claims: “The weight of reactor plutonium available to Ukraine can be estimated at seven tons.”
It continues: “A significant nuclear weapons arsenal would require much less material”, adding: “the amount of material is sufficient for hundreds of warheads with a tactical yield of several kilotons.”
The authors wrote that the bomb would be at around one tenth of the strenth of the “Fat Man”. But it would be enough to destroy “an entire Russian airbase or concentraed military, industrial or logistics installations,” said Oleksii Yizhak, the report’s author.
The paper is set to be presented on Wednesday at a conference, which will likely be attended by Ukraine’s ministers for defence, it is understood – but Ukrainian officials have previously denied that Kyiv is considering nuclear armament.
The paper is not endorsed by the Ukraine government.
