The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) on Wednesday accused the EU of building capacities for the production of nuclear weapons.
The SVR said in a statement that "behind closed doors at the EU headquarters," work has begun on creating a nuclear weapons production capacity, allegedly "to counter the mythical Russian threat."
It added that EU President Ursula von der Leyen and other representatives of EU leadership agreed to keep preparations highly confidential, publicly maintaining their commitment to relying on the US "nuclear umbrella."
"The EU leadership hopes that in this way it will be able to gain time for the covert formation of its own nuclear weapons industrial base, as well as to prepare the public for making a political decision on acquiring nuclear weapons," it said.
During this period, the UK and France will further align their national nuclear doctrines, with plans to eventually formalize a pan-European nuclear deterrence doctrine based on their military-technical capabilities and contributions from non-nuclear EU states, the statement added.
Meanwhile, according to the readout, the EU will retain the option to establish a fully autonomous nuclear command.
"The EU's plans are based on a serious industrial and technical basis. It is noteworthy that Germany, Italy, Czechia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain already possess significant competencies in the field of creating individual components of nuclear weapons," the SVR said.
According to the intelligence service, large amounts of irradiated nuclear fuel from decommissioned nuclear power plants are stored on the territories of the mentioned states.
"There is a possibility of its unauthorized extraction from storage facilities for further isolation of plutonium suitable for the manufacture of an atomic bomb," the SVR warned.
The intelligence service pointed out that German specialists are capable, within approximately one month, of covertly obtaining a quantity of weapons-grade plutonium sufficient for one nuclear explosive device in the hot cells of research laboratories in Karlsruhe, Dresden, Erlangen, and Julich, and within one week, of obtaining weapons-grade uranium at the enrichment facility in Gronau.
"We draw the attention of the US administration and the leadership of all other countries to the need to do everything possible to prevent the European Union from creating its own nuclear weapons and the inevitable new round of the global nuclear arms race," the SVR stressed.
