Possibility of Russia using chemical weapons in Ukraine worries the West

Western countries are concerned about the possibility of Russia using chemical weapons in Ukraine, raising the specter of atrocities committed by the Damascus regime in Syria.

Russia “will pay a high price if it uses chemical weapons” in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden warned during a speech at the White House on Friday.

Since Wednesday, both the United States and the United Kingdom have claimed that Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine.

The fact that Russia accused the United States and Ukraine of running laboratories intended to produce biological weapons in Ukraine is, according to them, a sign that the regime of Vladimir Putin is considering this type of scenario.

A UN Security Council meeting is scheduled on this issue this Friday at 15:00 GMT.

“The Kremlin intentionally spreads lies according to which the United States and Ukraine are carrying out activities related to chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine,” the spokesman for US diplomacy Ned Price reacted on Wednesday.

In 2018, Russia had already accused the United States of secretly carrying out biological experiments in a laboratory in Georgia, another former Soviet republic that, like Ukraine, wants to join NATO and the European Union (EU).

Ukraine has “biological research facilities”, confirmed the number three in US diplomacy, Victoria Nuland, stressing that the United States was “now quite concerned about the possibility that Russian forces would take control” of these places.

The Russians “start by saying that there are chemical weapons stored by their opponents or by the Americans. So when they deploy chemical weapons themselves, as I think they will, they have like a maskirovka” — a Russian term for the art of deceiving the enemy — “a prepared false story,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday. .

Russia is one of the 198 countries that signed the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which entered into force in 1997, and has “officially” completed the destruction of 100% of its 40,000 tons of chemical weapons.

“Terrorize the population”

But in recent years, Westerners have blamed Moscow for two cases of Novitchok nerve agent poisoning, targeting jailed opponent Alexei Navalni in 2020 and former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England in 2018.

On the other hand, Russia has always denied the repeated use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime against the civilian population.

These crimes largely went unpunished. In 2013, US President Barack Obama (2009-2017), who had made them a “red line”, renounced punitive strikes in Syria.

The hypothesis of a possible use of chemical weapons in Ukraine also worries France, at a time when the successes of the Russian army are rather scarce.

The Russian offensive launched on February 24 “was supposed to show Russia’s strength, the opposite is happening. This makes [el presidente ruso] Vladimir Putin is even more unpredictable,” French Chief of Staff Thierry Burkhard warned Wednesday in a letter sent to his general officers.

“Vladimir Putin did not enter that war to lose it. In case he stalls or he is humiliated, the use of dirty weapons or tactical nuclear weapons is part of the possibilities”, reacted a senior official on condition of anonymity.

“Russia failed to enter the war. You have to save face for the Kremlin,” said Mathieu Boulègue, a Russia specialist at the British think tank Chatham House. “The chemical is a vector that he could very well use. It’s not unlikely,” he added.

In Ukraine, chemical weapons would be used “to terrorize the civilian population and force them to flee. But it is not a weapon that would turn the tide of war. A tactical nuclear weapon that would destroy a Ukrainian city, yes”, warns Mathieu Boulègue.

Olivier Lepick, a research associate for the Foundation for Strategic Research who specializes in chemical weapons, is more cautious.

“We would take another step in terror and, therefore, in the disapproval of international public opinion, which would run the risk of reinforcing the sanctions regime that is already extremely severe,” he says.