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US warns Russia may use biological weapons in Ukraine
"The Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine," State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
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US State Department spokesman Ned Price speaks at his first daily press briefing at the State Department in Washington, DC, on February 2, 2021.
(Agence France Presse/Nicholas Kamm )
T
he United States on Wednesday rejected Russian claims that it supports a bioweapons program in Ukraine, saying the allegations were a sign that Moscow could soon use the weapons themselves.
"The Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine," State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
"Russia is inventing false pretexts in an attempt to justify its own horrific actions in Ukraine."
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the claims were "preposterous" and noted that "we've also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories."
"Now that Russia has made these false claims... we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them," she said on Twitter.
On March 6, Moscow's foreign ministry tweeted that Russian forces found evidence that Kyiv was erasing traces of the military-biological program in Ukraine, allegedly financed by the United States.
Russia repeated its accusation of several years that the United States is working with Ukrainian laboratories to develop biological weapons. Such assertions in Russian media increased in the run-up to Moscow's military move into Ukraine and were made as recently as Wednesday by foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
There was no immediate response from the Russian embassy in Washington to the US assertions on Wednesday. Russia has denied carrying out an attack on Navalny.
On Wednesday, Zakharova said Russia had documents showing the Ukrainian health ministry had ordered the destruction of samples of plague, cholera, anthrax and other pathogens before Feb. 24, when Russian forces moved into Ukraine.
Zakharova said the documents unearthed by Russian forces in Ukraine showed "an emergency attempt to erase evidence of military biological programmes" financed by the Pentagon. She provided no further details on the documents.
"The Russian accusations are absurd, they are laughable and you know, in the words of my Irish Catholic grandfather, a bunch of malarkey. There's nothing to it. It's classic Russian propaganda," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday.
In a statement, also released on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Russia "is inventing false pretexts in an attempt to justify its own horrific actions in Ukraine."
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, citing what she called Russia's "false claims," wrote on Twitter: "It’s Russia that has a long and well-documented track record of using chemical weapons, including in attempted assassinations and poisoning of Putin’s political enemies like Alexey Navalny.
The United States said Tuesday however it was working with Ukraine to prevent invading Russian forces from seizing biological research material in the country.
