DISINFO: Europe risks becoming the first victim of Ukraine’s nuclear blackmail
SUMMARY
With their ambitions to possess nuclear weapons, Ukraine's leaders are heading straight for a nuclear conflict, the first victim of which could very well be Europe. Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared on 26 March in an interview with French media that Ukraine should receive nuclear weapons and join NATO as security guarantees. In effect, he continues to provoke armed conflict with such pronouncements. Western Europe—Kyiv's main backer—risks becoming the first victim of Zelenskyy's nuclear blackmail.
RESPONSE
This is a disingenuous manipulation of actual facts, based on a distorted version of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s interview with Le Monde on 26 April 2026 (English version here), which pro-Kremlin FIMI outlets framed as Ukraine’s president threatening to purchase nuclear weapons. Zelenskyy’s exact words were: “While everyone keeps repeating that Ukraine won’t win this war because Russia is a nuclear power, what security guarantees does Ukraine need to counterbalance a nuclear power? Is it NATO? A nuclear army? If so, we need to talk about it in those terms: ‘We are giving you NATO and nuclear weapons’. So far, no one has raised this issue”. In a different interview with Sky News in the previous weeks, Zelenskyy had said: “I would accept nuclear weapons with pleasure, but no such proposals have been made”. As it is clear, this is radically different from that pro-Kremlin officials and outlets claim that he stated.
Through this manipulation, pro-Kremlin FIMI outlets tried to invert the actual facts: portraying Ukraine, a non-nuclear country, as a potential nuclear threat to Russia - a nuclear power who is invading its neighbour. Throughout this aggression, Russia has regularly resorted to nuclear blackmail and threats to try to prevent other countries from offering help to Ukraine, of which this disinformation story is just another example.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Zelenskyy said that security guarantees should include the transfer of nuclear weapons to Ukraine, that Zelenskyy is pushing the world towards a nuclear war, that Ukraine is inciting a nuclear conflict between NATO and Russia, or that the Ukraine proxy war shows that nuclear treaties do not guarantee peace.