Moscow cannot confirm reports that fighters loyal to oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin were close to taking control of a major stockpile of atomic weapons when they marched on the capital last month, the Kremlin has said.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday morning, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, insisted that he “does not have information” on the allegations and speculated that they could have been falsified, according to state news agency TASS.
The denial comes after the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, told Reuters that Prigozhin’s Wagner Group had reached a Russian military base, known as Voronezh-45, that houses Soviet-era nuclear warheads.
“If you are prepared to fight until the last man standing, this is one of the facilities that significantly raises the stakes,” Budanov claimed.
According to reports, clips posted online showed a detachment of mutineers had veered eastwards towards the base as their comrades pressed on up the highway towards Moscow. Along with interviews with locals, they purportedly confirm Wagner troops got within a hundred kilometers of Voronezh-45.
Budanov, though, says they went further, effectively taking charge of the area around the site. “The doors of the storage were closed and they didn’t get into the technical section,” he added.
Analysts have repeatedly questioned the security of Russia’s nuclear arsenal — reportedly still the largest in the world — in the wake of the uprising by Prigozhin and his disgruntled military outfit last month. As events unfolded deputy chairman of the country’s security council, former president Dmitry Medvedev, claimed that the rebellion could lead to an atomic war.
“In the history of mankind, there has never been a case where the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons was controlled by bandits,” insisted Medvedev, an enthusiastic cheerleader of the war in Ukraine. “Such a crisis will obviously not be limited to the framework of one country. The world will be brought to the brink of destruction.”
