Why Joe Biden fears Russian chemical attacks in Ukraine

Joe Biden has warned that Vladimir Putin could deploy chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine in an effort to break the country’s fierce resistance to Russia’s invasion.

Putin’s back is “against the wall” amid reports of rising Russian losses and the impact of biting sanctions on the country’s economy, the US president said, adding that Moscow could use a “false flag” attack in an attempt to justify the use of banned weapons.

The Russian president is “asserting that we in America have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe – simply not true”, Biden said. “They are also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine.

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“That’s a clear sign he’s considering using both of those. He’s already used chemical weapons in the past, and we should be careful of what’s about to come.”

Chemical escalation

Biden’s warning comes a week after White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Western officials should be “on the lookout” for the use of biological weapons.

Describing the allegation that Ukraine was planning to use chemical weapons as an “obvious ploy” to justify further attacks, Psaki said Russia may “use chemical or biological weapons” or “create a false flag operation”, adding: “It’s a clear pattern.”

Boris Johnson has also warned that Russia could be planning to use banned weapons in its assault on Ukraine. He told reporters last week: “The stuff that you’re hearing about chemical weapons is straight out of their playbook.

“They start saying that there are chemical weapons that are being stored by their opponents or by the Americans. And so when they themselves deploy chemical weapons – as I fear they may – they have a sort of a maskirovka, a fake story, ready to go.”

Referencing the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury four years ago, the prime minister warned: “You have seen it in Syria, you saw it even in the UK. I just note that is what they are already doing. It is a cynical, barbaric government, I’m afraid.”

UK business minister Paul Scully this morning told Sky News a chemical or biological attack by Russia would “undoubtedly” be a war crime.

“I think President Biden and the Prime Minister have been really resolute in making sure that we can take every action of the international community to address those crimes of Vladimir Putin,” he said.

“We’ve got to remember as well with all of this, this is Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, it is not the Russian people’s. We’ve got to make sure we can appeal to the Russian people to bring an end to this.”

White House officials have also raised the spectre of a chemical attack on Ukraine, with one telling NBC News that the weapons could be used “to justify a false-flag operation or them using chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine themselves”.

In a false-flag operation, “one side of a conflict commits an act and tries to make it appear that the other side committed it, often to justify an attack on the other side”, the broadcaster explained.

Last week, Russia claimed that the US was “developing bioweapons in Ukraine”, The Hill reported, prompting fears that the allegations were “a possible pretext for Moscow to deploy chemical weapons of its own”. US officials dismissed the claim as “laughable”.

Appearing in front of a congressional committee, CIA director William Burns said that the claims emanating from Moscow “underscores the concern that all of us need to focus on those kind of issues, where it’s the potential for a use of chemical weapons either as a false flag operation, or as against Ukrainians.

“This is something… is very much a part of Russia’s playbook,” he warned. “They’ve used those weapons against their own citizens, they’ve at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere; so it’s something we take very seriously.”

History repeating

Just as Russia’s bombing campaign has evoked memories of its attacks on Syrian cities including Aleppo and Idlib, the possibility that it could deploy chemical weapons has also raised fears that it could bring tactics used in the Middle East to a European battlefield.

“As Russia’s offensive has faltered around Kyiv and Kharkiv,” the Financial Times said, “Moscow’s repeated claims over chemical and biological weapons programmes in Ukraine have raised western concerns Putin may resort to the use of unconventional weapons.”

In his late-night address, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week described Moscow’s claims as a “smokescreen to justify it deploying ever more inhuman weapons”, the paper said, asking Putin: “What else have you prepared for us?”

“Allegedly, we are preparing a chemical attack,” he said. “This makes me really worried, because we’ve been repeatedly convinced: if you want to know Russia’s plans, look at what Russia accuses others of [doing].”

In 2013, “rockets containing the nerve agent sarin hit the Ghouta suburb of Syria’s capital” in “the deadliest chemical weapon attack since the Iran-Iraq war”, The Telegraph said. “Estimates vary” but it is widely accepted that “somewhere between 281 and 1,729 men, women and children died before dawn broke over Damascus.

“Eyewitnesses described how victims managed to escape from their houses, only to collapse in the street with foam bubbling out of their mouths and noses,” the paper added. Those exposed “died from suffocation as a result of respiratory paralysis”.

Western governments were quick to blame Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime for the attack, with Vladimir Putin cutting an isolated figure when wrote in The New York Times that “there is every reason to believe [poison gas] was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces”.

Almost a decade on, Andy Weber, who served as Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of defence responsible for nuclear, chemical and biological defence programmes, told The Telegraph that “despite Putin’s reckless bluster on nuclear weapons, the use of biological weapons in Ukraine is much more likely.

“The USSR had the largest biological weapons programme the world has ever known and parts of it have continued uninterrupted since the break-up of the Soviet Union,” he warned.

“Russia has three military biological facilities that have never, to our knowledge, been visited by non-Russians. We don’t fully know what they're up to.”