On the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv has denied "absurd" claims by Russian intelligence that they will be given nuclear weapons by the UK and France.
Senior Russian security official Dimitry Medvedev threatened Kyiv, Paris and London with nuclear strikes on Tuesday, following unfounded reports from the Kremlin alleging that France and the UK were working on supplying Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
Russia's primary foreign intelligence agency, the SVR, claimed that "London and Paris" were "preparing to arm Kyiv with a nuclear bomb" on Tuesday, alleging that Ukraine's allies sought to achieve a "victory over Russia at the hands of the Ukrainian Armed Forces".
The claims were subsequently picked up by the Russian state news agency TASS and amplified by pro-Kremlin accounts on social media, who shared the SVR's claims that France and the UK's plan constituted a "flagrant violation of international law".
In reality, there is no evidence to support these claims: they are unsupported and contradict international law, namely the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), under which the UK and France are recognised nuclear-weapon states — Ukraine, however, is not.
The allegations come as Ukraine marks the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, which it launched in February 2022 — a military aggression which violates the UN Charter.
