The new report, published by military think tank the Ukrainian Centre for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, has not yet been officially endorsed by the Kyiv regime
Ukraine could be “months away” from manufacturing a nuclear bomb capable of inflicing Nagasaki-style instruction on a Russian city if the US drops military aid, top officials have claimed.
Volodymyr Zelensky could resort to the “nuclear option” should incoming Trump officials deny the country vital funds needed to continue defending against Russian aggression, according to a new briefing document. The document, prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence suggests the country has the technology to quickly develop a rudimentary bomb.
The prospective device, made using plutonium and in the vein of the US-made “Fat-Man” that helped bring World War Two to an end in 1945, would “not be difficult to make”, the document adds. But it would have to be crudely constructed using vital materials used to power the country’s nuclear power stations.
A passage from the document reported by The Times states the wartime Kyiv regime could seek to create “a simple atomic bomb” within the Manhattan Project framework. It states: “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later.”
The document adds that Kyiv could even construct the bomb without the massive resources that powered the US project nearly 80 years ago. It theorises that officials would only need to extract plutonium from spent fuel rods taken from the country’s nuclear reactors.
Ukraine is home to the Zaporizhzhia power plant, the largest in Europe which boasts six reactors. Including the country’s three other plants, the Kyiv regime could take spent rods from a total of 15 reactors, giving it ample material to create a bomb it could theoretically use against Russia.
The report, authored by Oleksii Yizhak, the head of department at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, estimates that Ukraine has up to seven tonnes of available plutonium. It says: “The weight of reactor plutonium available to Ukraine can be estimated at seven tons…A significant nuclear weapons arsenal would require much less material.”
The document adds that this amount of material would yield “hundreds of warheads with a tactical yield of several kilotons”. Even with the amount of available plutonium, the power of these salvaged warheads would likely only measure up to around a tenth of Fat-Man.
But it states that this would still be enough to “destroy an entire Russian airbase or concentrated military, industrial or logistics installations”. Ukraine’s government has not officially endorsed the paper however, despite warnings from President Volodymyr Zelensky that the country would need a nuclear arsenal to defend against Russia if it was prevented from joining NATO.
Incoming US President Donald Trump has claimed he can find peace in Ukraine “on day one” of his administration, but has refused to specify how he plans to realise this outcome. He is said to be considering forcing the two countries into negotiation by withholding Ukrainian aid and piling pressure on Zelensky to concede some territory to Russia.