After Vladimir Putin in his "Valdai speech" stated that Ukraine was creating a "dirty bomb" and Russia even knew "about where this is being done", propagandists from federal TV channels deciphered this hint. Vesti Nedeli correspondent Alexei Petrov said :
“It became known that Kyiv, on the basis of a projectile from the Tochka-U missile system, made a dummy of the Iskander missile for a provocation with a “dirty bomb” over the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The technical preparation for the provocation has been completed. It was carried out by specialists from Yuzhmash, formerly one of the leading missile enterprises in the USSR. According to the secret plans of Kyiv, the head cassette part of the dummy will be stuffed with radioactive material, and then shot down in the Chernobyl area. And here is the world news of a shocking scale – Russia has used nuclear weapons! Fragments of the layout and elements of the alleged Iskander's electronics are shown on Western channels – what other doubts can there be?
In the Vremya program, correspondent Anatoly Lazarev added details:
“The preparation of a provocation with a dirty bomb has already reached the finish line,” a source familiar with the situation told the RIA Novosti agency. Yuzhmash specialists have already made a dummy of the Iskander missile, the head of which is planned to be filled with radioactive material, and then “shoot down” by Ukrainian air defense forces over the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in order to announce the Russian launch of a nuclear charge.
Yuzhmash is a large Ukrainian enterprise for the production of rocket and space technology. It is no coincidence that the dummy is made specifically for the Iskander: Ukraine has many outdated, but outwardly very similar Tochka-U missiles just like the Iskander; they were even assembled at the same factory in Udmurtia with a difference of several ten years.”
The Vremya program even showed images of the rockets so that viewers could see their resemblance.
That's just the similarity in the picture of Channel One is deceptive. Despite similar outlines, Tochka-U and Iskander missiles have different sizes. The diameter of the Iskander is 920 mm, and the Tochka-U is 650 mm, almost one and a half times smaller. It is impossible to create an Iskander model based on Tochka-U, except perhaps a smaller copy, which is unlikely to convince international experts. And the scenario in which a rocket allegedly launched by Russian troops with a radioactive filling explodes over the Chernobyl exclusion zone, that is, a practically uninhabited territory where the harm caused to Ukraine will be minimal, does not look particularly plausible.
A few days earlier, Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the RF Armed Forces, spoke at a briefing about the Ukrainian "dirty bomb" and showed photographs of facilities where work on its creation could be carried out, as well as radioactive waste storage facilities that could be in applied to her. As it turned out, the photo showed reactors located at Russian facilities – the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant in the Sverdlovsk Region, the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant and the St. Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics, moreover, the photo was taken at the St. Petersburg Institute when Vladimir Putin personally launched the reactor via video link. And the waste storage was photographed 12 years ago in Slovenia.
Back in March, Kremlin propagandists claimed that Ukraine was working on the creation of a “dirty bomb”, but then they claimed that this was happening in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, where the increased radiation background hid the work. However, no evidence was presented, although the exclusion zone was captured by Russian troops in the early days of the war.