Zelensky Says He Would Welcome Nuclear Arms from UK, France

(MENAFN) Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has declared he would have accepted nuclear weapons from Britain and France "with pleasure," while clarifying that no such proposal had ever been extended to Kyiv.

Speaking in an interview published Friday, Zelensky was responding to explosive allegations from Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which claimed Paris and London had been secretly facilitating the transfer of components and technologies that could allow Ukraine to construct either a radioactive dirty bomb or a fully operational nuclear device.

A dirty bomb — a conventional explosive packed with radioactive material — lacks the catastrophic destructive capacity of a nuclear warhead but carries the potential to render vast areas dangerously contaminated.

The SVR contended that acquiring such a weapon would give Ukraine leverage, suggesting the country "would be able to aspire to more advantageous terms of ceasing the hostilities." Both Britain and France have categorically rejected the allegations.

When pressed on whether Kyiv had been covertly pursuing nuclear capabilities through Western allies, Zelensky acknowledged he would have taken them "with pleasure," yet conceded he "didn't have propositions." His remarks echo a warning he issued in early 2022 — days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion — when he raised the possibility of Ukraine reconsidering its non-nuclear status.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova seized on Zelensky's comments, telling a state news agency that the Ukrainian leader had "confessed what London and Paris have stubbornly kept silent about."

Adding another layer to the unfolding controversy, Kirill Dmitriev — an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin and a senior figure in ongoing Ukraine settlement talks — alleged that the Sky News interviewer had "urgently interrupted" Zelensky to prevent him from fully completing his response on the nuclear weapons question.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated that the SVR's intelligence would be "taken into account" during active peace negotiations, further suggesting that making the information public may have helped derail what he described as "crazy" nuclear ambitions.

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