LAST UPDATE | 11 Mar 2022
UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT HAS rejected Russia’s claims about the manufacturing of biological weapons in his country ahead of a United Nations Security Council meeting which is taking place today.
Russia yesterday accused the United States of funding research into the development of biological weapons in Ukraine, which has faced an assault by tens of thousands of Russian troops since 24 February.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden, who also denied Russia claims, has pledged to avoid provoking Moscow into “World War III”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Russia’s allegations in a video address last night and suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin Putin may be considering using these kinds of weapons in Ukraine.
“Where will you strike with chemical weapons?” Zelenskyy asked. “At the maternity hospital in Mariupol? At the church in Kharkiv? At the Okhmatdt Children’s hospital? Or at laboratories, most of which have remained since Soviet times and are engaged in ordinary science? Ordinary, not military technology.
We are decent people, I am the president of a decent country, a decent nation, the father of two children. No chemical weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction were developed on my land. The whole world knows that. You know that, and if you do something like that against us you will get the most severe sanctions in response.
The UN Security Council is holding emergency meeting today on the alleged manufacture of biological weapons in Ukraine at Russia’s request, whose credibility on chemical weapons was questioned during a session on Syria.
Speaking to reporters today, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said: “I think people would regard that as a very cynical move by Russia, in respect of it calling for a Security meeting in terms of the utilisation of chemical weapons.”
Again, we would say to Russia: you are responsible for this war on the population of Ukraine, you are guilty of war crimes, you should stop and you should end the war. Stop playing games with people’s lives. It’s just not acceptable.
“We’re saying it both behind the scenes and in front. We’re saying it out front to Russia, there’s no hiding place for what’s going on and we can’t play games with the lives of people,” he said.
“We can all see what is going on on our television screens.”
Both Washington and Kyiv have denied the allegations, with the United States saying they were a sign that Moscow could soon use the weapons itself.
Western states have charged that Russia is employing a ruse by accusing their opponents and the United States of developing biological and chemical weapons to lay the ground for their possible use in Ukraine – something Moscow has been accused of doing in Syria.
At a monthly Security Council meeting on the use of chemical weapons in Syria – a case that remains unresolved and continues to suffer from a UN-denounced lack of information from Damascus – both Washington and London raised Ukraine.
“The Russian Federation has repeatedly spread disinformation regarding Syria’s repeated use of chemical weapons,” said the deputy US envoy to the UN, Richard Mills.
The recent web of lies that Russia has cast in an attempt to justify the premeditated and unjustified war it has undertaken against Ukraine, should make clear, once and for all, that Russia also cannot be trusted when it talks about chemical weapon use in Syria.
This is preposterous. It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent.
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) March 9, 2022
Mills’ UK counterpart, James Kariuki, denounced Moscow’s attack on Ukraine and said the “parallels with Russian action in Syria are clear.”
“Regrettably, the comparison also extends to chemical weapons, as we see the familiar spectre of Russian chemical weapons disinformation raising its head in Ukraine.”
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in an interview with Sky News, said he fears Putin may deploy chemical weapons in Ukraine, stating that it would be “straight out of Russia’s playbook”.
“They start saying that there are chemical weapons that have been stored by their opponents or by the Americans,” he said. “And so when they themselves deploy chemical weapons, as I fear they may, they have a sort of maskirovka – a fake story – ready to go.
“You’ve seen it in Syria. You saw it even in the UK. That’s what they’re already doing. It is a cynical, barbaric government.”
In 2018, Moscow accused the United States of secretly conducting biological weapons experiments in a laboratory in Georgia, another former Soviet republic that, like Ukraine, has ambitions to join NATO and the European Union.
While many Western nations have expressed concern about the intentions behind Putin’s latest allegations, some commentators have said the claims do not necessarily mean chemical weapons are part of Russia’s own plans.
Founder of the investigative journalism website Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, pointed out that since 2018 “Russian officials have claimed over 60 false flag chemical attacks were being prepared” by Syrian opposition groups and their allies.
“Russia says s**t likethis all the time, all it means is they’re shameless liars,” he said.
So when you see a Russian official lying, it's not some clever ploy, its just they're so full to the brim with shit it spilling out their mouths. It looks gross, but you're only noticing because you're actually looking this time round.
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) March 9, 2022
Higgins said this kind of escalation by Russia cannot be completely ruled out, but it would be “the exception, not the rule”.
Speaking today, US President Joe Biden said: “I’m not going to speak about the intelligence, but Russia would play a severe price if they used chemicals.”
He emphasised that US forces will not fight in Ukraine, despite the pleas of many Ukrainians.
“We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine,” Biden said.
“Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III — something we must strive to prevent.”
- With reporting from AFP.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say