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Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
Britain has pushed back hard against Russia’s specious accusation that the United Kingdom is engaging in nuclear brinkmanship, after its decision to supply Ukraine with armor-piercing depleted uranium (DU) tank shells, which will be sent alongside the Challenger 2 tanks London is giving Kyiv.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his aides argue the shells have a “nuclear component” and that Britain is, therefore, triggering nuclear escalation with the deployment of the DU rounds, as former Russian President and now National Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev told reporters the shells increase the odds of nuclear escalation.
But as munitions experts point out, DU is incapable of triggering a chain reaction. It is the material left after the enrichment of natural uranium — which is used for nuclear warheads and reactor fuel — and at 1.7 times denser than lead, when rounds are tipped with it, they can penetrate the armor of enemy tanks more easily.
Indeed, DU shells have been used for decades — including during the Gulf War in 1991 and in the Balkans in the late 1990s — so British defense officials are right to describe them as “standard” and “common” munitions. So far so good. But it’s also true that these British-supplied shells will only contribute to the toxic legacy that Putin’s war will leave Ukrainians struggling with for decades.
A burning cloud of vapor erupts on impact of a DU shell, leaving behind a weakly radioactive but still poisonous dust. And Medvedev is complaining that the dust from the spent shells poses health dangers to Russian soldiers.
Having shown no sympathy for the ill-trained Russian conscripts hurled into war and used as cannon fodder in the meat grinder of battles in Donbas so far, Medvedev is shedding crocodile tears. And he “forgot” to mention that Russian forces also use DU tank shells — ammunition for Soviet-era 125-millimeter tank guns contain a DU core, and Russia’s T-80 tanks are equipped with Svinets-1, which has a uranium-tungsten carbide core, and DU Svinets-2 rounds.
But British officials do appear a touch blasé about the longer-term health risks to Ukrainian gunners from handling and firing the rounds, as well as potential legacy hazards to civilians. And DU shells — Russian as well as British ones — do pose hazards to Ukrainian soldiers and civilians alike, although there’s considerable scientific dispute surrounding the level of risk.
Britain’s defense ministry said this week: “Independent research by scientists from groups such as the Royal Society has assessed that any impact to personal health and the environment from the use of depleted uranium munitions is likely to be low.” Indeed, the 20-plus-year-old Royal Society studies the ministry cites do conclude the risks are very low, and that only “for small numbers of soldiers there might be circumstances in which risks are higher.”
When it comes to the risks for civilians, Britain’s national academy of sciences said: “Environmental contamination will be very variable but, in most cases, the associated health risks due to DU will be very low. In some worst-case scenarios, high local levels of uranium could occur in food or water that could have adverse effects on the kidney.”
Others, though, have been less sanguine about the shells — and even the Royal Society did caution that more research needs to be completed on their longer-term hazards.
For example, in 2018, a parliamentary commission of inquiry in Italy accused military chiefs of having been in “denial” about the risks of DU shells, saying there had been “deafening silences maintained by government authorities.” It suggested Italian soldiers had been exposed to “shocking” levels of DU while handling the rounds in Italy and during foreign missions, sowing death and illness.
And last year, the U.N. Environment Program said in a report that DU was an environmental concern. “Depleted uranium and toxic substances in common explosives can cause skin irritation, kidney failure and increase the risks of cancer,” it noted, adding that “the chemical toxicity of depleted uranium is considered a more significant issue than the possible impacts of its radioactivity.”
Of course, Ukraine is fighting for its very existence and, understandably, will deploy every weapon it can to ensure it survives as a nation.
It is Russia that is ultimately responsible for the awful toxic legacy Ukrainians are going to have to confront for many decades to come.
In an interview with POLITICO, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric highlighted the terrible war contamination that will be left behind, independent of the DU shells. “Decontamination can take decades before you can think about any reasonable levels of agriculture and reconstruction,” she said, speaking prior to the British announcement on their deployment.
“Croatia took almost 30 years to complete decontamination of all affected areas. I hear that the level of contamination in some parts of Ukraine is so high now that it is comparable to, if not exceeding levels in Afghanistan. The impact of contamination in Ukraine will depend on the intended land use in the future and, in any case, agreement on access for clearance personnel will be a precursor to start clearance activities,” Spoljarik said.
And along the same lines, Mat Whatley, a British army veteran and former head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Donetsk, called for demining to be integrated into any future Marshall plan for Ukraine.
“Current estimates show that on the whole, 160,000 square kilometers of the country may be contaminated. By comparison, in 2020, 153 square kilometers of land was cleared of mines globally. At that rate, clearing Ukraine would take over 1,000 years. And though humanitarian demining assistance is taking place in the country, it remains small-scale and remote from future reconstruction priority areas,” he warned.
From unexploded and exploded ordnance to hundreds of thousands of mines — that is the legacy Putin is leaving Ukraine.
