The White House has taken note of Russia’s claims that Ukraine is making biological weapons with US support. – Crazy, says Jen Psaki.
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Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said earlier Wednesday that Russia has evidence that the United States has supported a biological weapons program in Ukraine’s laboratories.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has also accused “Ukrainian nationalists” of preparing to use chemical weapons in a village northwest of Kharkiv, writes Guardian.
Jen Psaki of the White House has now commented on the allegations:
– This is crazy. This is the kind of misinformation we have seen repeatedly from the Russians over several years in Ukraine and in other countries, information that has been rejected, and which is an example of the type of false pretense that we have warned that Russia would invent.
She further writes that the United States complies with international laws on chemical and biological weapons, and that the country does not possess or develop such weapons anywhere. Russia has a long, well-documented history of using such weapons, including through the poisoning of political opponents such as Navalny.
– Russia has a long history of blaming the West for violations of the law that they themselves are guilty of. In December, Russia came up with false accusations that the US is deploying chemical weapons with contractors in Ukraine.
“This is obviously a tactic to justify further, planned, unprovoked and unjustified attacks on Ukraine,” writes Psaki.
She also points out that Chinese spokespersons accuse the Russians of false accusations, and says they repeat conspiracy theories.
Psakis comes after high-ranking Western officials warned that Russia could use so-called unconventional weapons, such as the much talked about thermobaric vacuum bombs.
Russia itself has used chemical weapons in at least 17 cases during the war in Syria, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, OPCW.
The American think tank Institute for the study of war (ISW) has issued a warning in which they write that Russia may launch a so-called “false flag” attack. These are attacks that they will accuse Ukraine of carrying out with chemical or radiological weapons against civilians, as an excuse for further escalation on the part of Russia.
The think tank has listed a large number of “conditions” or reasons for such an operation, including when Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu in December 2021 accused the United States of planning a chemical attack in Dombass at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
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