The explosion May 13 near the city of Khmelnytsky in Western Ukraine by Russian Kalibr missiles has made approximately 50 square miles poisoned and unfit for farming for the next 10-15 years, affirmed military and government expert, retired Col. Douglas MacGregor, on a recent podcast.
Some of the exploded products were radioactive “depleted” uranium weapons stored in warehouses in the area. Britain, spearheaded by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, against world opinion and common sense, sent these carcinogenic weapons to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
This is just the disaster I feared (with possibly worse to come) with two nuclear armed nations fighting a proxy war, causing the Ukrainian people, and environment, massive suffering. Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine one day after Zelensky stated his country would begin producing their own nuclear weapons.
Uranium is the heaviest natural element, so it is used by militaries to pierce tough targets like tanks, and it ignites on impact. But weapons made from “depleted” (read: “used”) uranium from by-products of enriching uranium for nuclear power reactors, still retain two-thirds of the original radioactivity of U238 after the U235 is extracted, which the militaries of the U.S., UK, NATO and Ukraine will not admit.
The U238 in “depleted” weapons has a half-life of 4.5 billion years (the age of the Earth).
Fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Eastern Ukraine is still a potential Chernobyl. With six reactors, it is the largest nuclear plant in Europe.
We must make our voices heard and protest preventable calamities in all ways that we can. We the people must be organized and demand no radioactive components in the war. There must be a ceasefire. It is imperative that we do not take sides.
The security of all nations must be guaranteed with a treaty—a negotiated agreement, including an independent Ukraine, which will not be a NATO member—which could have been achieved a year ago, avoiding much loss.
Barry Barnett is a political and environmental author and activist in Santa Rosa. More of his work is at patreon.com/BarryBarnett.
Don’t know about the supposed Colonel, usually colonels are not Russian disinformation agents, but Barry, you seem to be what they call a “useful” idiot. The claims made in this article are totally bogus. The only thing genuine is Russians hit some location where high explosives were stored. I have seen reports that they were very old Soviet munitions stores and of little or no use in this conflict. There is a substantial discussion of this at the excellent article https://www.newsweek.com/huge-mushroom-blast-khmelnytskyi-reignites-depleted-uranium-claims-1800443? There are Twitter links in the article where the exact location of the blast has been plotted and this has been shown to be location of stored Soviet munitions. You probably do not even know what depleted uranium is, only what Saddam Hussein’s propaganda campaign began in 1991 and still going on thanks to supposedly well meaning humanitarians like you. You have some in your own backyard or where ever there is nearby dirt, everyone on Earth does. You also drank in, ate or breathed in a fraction of a microgram of uranium, dominately DU (natural uranium-238, very highly purified 99.6 to 99.8% as opposed to the 99.3% in natural uranium) every single day of your life. Everyone who has ever been, is, or ever will be on Earth has done the same. Uranium is that common in the world. It’s in all tobacco and probably in all cannibis as well; I just doubt anyone has actually tested for it. Perhaps you should since you seem to think you are an expert.
I just found Col MacGregor’s website and e-mail and have asked him about the statement you attribute to him. I also asked him if he had said anything about the UK’s supplying depleted uranium kinetic energy penetrator rounds for the Challenger II tanks that the UK is supplying to Ukraine. I will post his answer here.