WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration publicly warned Wednesday that Russia could attempt to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine as the White House dismissed Russia’s claims of illegal chemical weapons development in the country it has invaded.
This week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine without evidence of deploying chemical and biological weapons laboratories on its territory, supported by US White House press secretary Jen Psaki, called Russia’s statement “ridiculous” and said that it could be part of Russia to lay the groundwork for itself to use such weapons of mass destruction against Ukraine.
“This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to justify its further deliberate, unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine,” Psaki tweeted on Wednesday. “Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has apparently supported this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia possibly using chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine or organizing a false flag operation using them.”
The US has been warning for months about Russia’s false flag operations to create a pretext for an invasion. Wednesday’s warning suggests Russia could try to create an excuse to further escalate the two-week conflict, which has seen the Russian offensive slowed by stronger-than-expected Ukrainian defenders but not stopped.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Wednesday called Russia’s statement “nonsense.”
The international community has assessed for years that Russia has already used chemical weapons to assassinate Putin’s enemies such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its own people in a decade-long civil war.
Asked by a Russian journalist about the claims, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “At the moment, we have no information to support these reports or these claims about such labs.”
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“Our colleagues from the World Health Organization who have worked with the Ukrainian governments have stated that they are not aware of any activity by the Ukrainian government that is inconsistent with its obligations under international treaties, including in relation to chemical weapons or biological weapons.” . Dujarric added.
Russia has a long history of spreading disinformation about US bioweapons research. In the 1980s, Russian intelligence spread the conspiracy theory that the US had created HIV in a lab. More recently, Russian state media have circulated theories about dangerous research in laboratories in Ukraine and Georgia.
The conspiracy theory about U.S. labs in Ukraine has been picked up by Chinese state media and is now circulating on online forums popular with COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and far-right groups in the U.S.
Philippa Lenzos, senior lecturer in science and international security at King’s College London, said there are no “US labs” in Ukraine. Instead, she said in an email, there are labs in the country that have received money from the US Department of Defense Threat Reduction program.
“These are state and veterinary institutions that are owned and operated by Ukraine,” she said.
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Associated Press contributor Angelo Fichera contributed to this report from Philadelphia.