Uranium waves. How Russia spreads propaganda about depleted uranium

Eurosceptics, populists, critics of NATO are Russia's long—standing allies in spreading propaganda about the use of conventional weapons in service in Russia itself.
On March 21, British Deputy Defense Minister Annabel Goldie said that the country, along with Challenger 2 tanks, plans to provide Ukraine with armor-piercing shells containing depleted uranium. This news caused a wave of statements by senior Russian officials who suddenly began to deal with the environment of Ukraine, the state of health of Ukrainians and the prospects of Ukrainian exports of products. But this flow did not arise from scratch.

Russia has been talking for decades about the threat of depleted uranium. Back in 2016, the Russian media wrote about the dirty bombs of the Pentagon, and in 2011 - about Libya sown with uranium dust. In such articles, Russian propagandists talked about the terrible consequences of the NATO bombing in Iraq, where now the birth of a healthy-looking child is a great happiness, about Libyans shining from radioactive dust, about the ultra-high incidence of Serbian residents, primarily cancer.

Before the war, hysteria in the Russian media usually coincided with another wave of statements by Serbia itself or opposition European politicians demanding an investigation into the use of depleted uranium shells — depending on the electoral cycle of these countries or on other factors. For example, the study of different syndromes.

War syndrome

At the end of the nineties and the beginning of the two thousandth in Europe and North America there was a fierce discussion between scientists, politicians, doctors and the military: everyone was trying to establish the causes of the Gulf War syndrome, or Balkan syndrome. Many military personnel — thousands or even hundreds of thousands of veterans of the Gulf War, Serbia and Kosovo on both sides of the ocean — complained of dozens of different symptoms, among which chronic fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive problems and loss of coordination were most common.