Russia: Putin 'may use chemical weapons' says expert

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The fears were expressed by Alexander Rodnyansky — advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — during an interview with Politico. The news comes the day after US Representative Liz Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that she feels the use of chemical weapons by Russia should be considered a “red line” for NATO to intervene in Ukraine. Early this month, US President Joe Biden said during a press conference that Russia will face “severe consequences” if it unleashes chemical munitions in an escalation of the ongoing conflict.

Mr Rodnyansky said: “As far as how likely this is, there is a chance.

“I hope that they’re not as crazy at this point — but there is a chance, especially given the objectives that they’ve failed to achieve.

“And that is to take the major cities — chemical weapons, as inhumane as they are, they’re useful from a very technical, say, heartless perspective.”

“The Russian army is obviously way too incompetent to take these cities without major destruction or losses to their troops.”

Mr Rodnyansky continued: “So one way around this from a pure, heartless military perspective, is to use something like chemical or biological weapons.

This, he added, “would obviously kill the whole population, but leave all the infrastructure intact.

“That’s what they used in Syria […] when they had similar issues, they couldn’t take the cities.

“From this very brutal, military tactical perspective, it gives them a sort of solution to the issues.”

Fears that chemical weapons will be deployed against Ukraine have been stoked in previous weeks by a series of seemingly unfounded claims made by Russia’s foreign ministry.

Officials have asserted that the US is developing biological and chemical materials in the Ukraine that could be used to produce weapons.

Various analysts — including British MP and former Army captain Tobias Ellwood — have warned that these allegations represent a “despicable pretext” to justify their own subsequent biological or chemical attack.

Mr Ellwood said they could easily “claim a stray Ukrainian missile hit an American run chemical or biological facility causing massive fallout.”

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Russia has a rich history of developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) — being believed to have operated the world’s longest-running and most sophisticated biological weapons programme and, in the late nineties, having publicly acknowledged that it had amassed a vast arsenal of chemical munitions.

Among their former stockpile were the nerve agents Sarin, Soman and VX, as well as the blister agents Lewisite and mustard gas — so named for the painful and scarring water blisters they can cause on exposed skin.

On September 27, 2017, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons announced that Russia had successfully destroyed its entire declared arsenal of the horrific armaments.

However, fears remain that Russia has since replenished its supplies — or, alternatively, kept undeclared weapons in reserve — meaning that it may still be able to launch a chemical attack on Ukraine despite its apparent disarmament.

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