White House warns Russia may use chemical weapons in Ukraine

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration publicly warned Wednesday that Russia might find to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine as the White House rejected Russian promises of illegal chemical weapons growth in the nation it has invaded.

This 7 days, Russian Overseas Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova — with no evidence — accused Ukraine of working chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. White Dwelling press secretary Jen Psaki identified as Russia’s claim “preposterous” and said it could be aspect of an endeavor by Russia to lay the groundwork for its personal use of these weapons of mass destruction against Ukraine.

“This is all an clear ploy by Russia to test to justify its more premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine,” Psaki tweeted Wednesday. “Now that Russia has designed these phony claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we really should all be on the lookout for Russia to potentially use chemical or organic weapons in Ukraine, or to make a fake flag operation using them.”

The U.S. for months has warned about Russian “false flag” operations to build a pretext for the invasion. Wednesday’s warning proposed Russia may look for to make a pretense for even further escalating the two-week aged conflict that has seen the Russian offensive slowed by more powerful-than-envisioned Ukrainian defenders, but not stopped.

Dmitry Chumakov, a Russian deputy U.N. ambassador, repeated the accusation Wednesday, urging Western media to deal with “the information about magic formula organic laboratories in Ukraine.”

Pentagon push secretary John Kirby on Wednesday termed the Russian assert “a bunch of malarkey.”

The global community for years has assessed that Russia has used chemical weapons just before in carrying out assassination attempts against Putin enemies like Alexey Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the Assad federal government in Syria, which has applied chemical weapons against its individuals in a ten years-long civil war.

Requested by a Russian journalist about the promises, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric explained. “At this level have no information and facts to affirm these stories or these allegations about these kinds of labs.”

“Our colleagues at the Environment Overall health Group, who have been operating with the Ukrainian Governments, stated they are unaware of any activity on the component of the Ukrainian Governing administration which is inconsistent with its international treaty obligations, which include on chemical weapons or organic weapons,” Dujarric additional.

Russia has a very long heritage of spreading disinformation about U.S. organic weapons investigate. In the 1980s, Russian intelligence spread the conspiracy concept that the U.S. developed HIV in a lab. Additional just lately, Russian condition media have spread theories about harmful investigate at labs in Ukraine and Ga.

The conspiracy theory about U.S.-run labs in Ukraine has been picked up by Chinese condition-managed media and is now circulating in on-line message boards popular with COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and considerably-ideal teams in the U.S.

Filippa Lentzos, a senior lecturer in science and intercontinental security at King’s Higher education London, stated there are no “U.S. labs” in Ukraine. In its place, she stated in an e mail, there are labs in the nation that have gained income as a result of a U.S. Defense Section risk reduction plan.

“These are public and animal health and fitness services that are owned and operated by Ukraine,” she said.

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Related Press writers Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.