UN Security Council to meet Friday on biological weapons at Moscow’s request
The UN Security
Council will hold an urgent meeting Friday at the request of Russia over the
alleged development of biological weapons in Ukraine.
Russia on Thursday accused the United States of funding research into the
development of biological weapons in Ukraine, which has faced an assault by
tens of thousands of Russian troops since February 24.
Both Washington and Kyiv have denied the existence of laboratories
intended to produce biological weapons in Ukraine, with the United States
saying the allegations were a sign that Moscow could soon use the weapons
itself.
Western states have accused Russia of employing a ruse by accusing their
opponents and the United states of developing biological and chemical weapons
to lay the ground for their possible use in Ukraine — something Moscow has
been accused of doing in Syria.
At a monthly Security Council meeting on the use of chemical weapons in
Syria — a case that remains unresolved and continues to suffer from a UN-
denounced lack of information from Damascus — both Washington and London
raised Ukraine.
“The Russian Federation has repeatedly spread disinformation regarding
Syria’s repeated use of chemical weapons,” said the deputy US envoy to the
UN, Richard Mills. “The recent web of lies that Russia has cast in an attempt
to justify the premeditated and unjustified war it has undertaken against
Ukraine, should make clear, once and for all, that Russia also cannot be
trusted when it talks about chemical weapon use in Syria.”
Mills’ UK counterpart, James Kariuki, denounced Moscow’s attack on Ukraine
and said the “parallels with Russian action in Syria are clear.”
“Regrettably, the comparison also extends to chemical weapons, as we see
the familiar specter of Russian chemical weapons disinformation raising its
head in Ukraine.”
In 2018, Moscow accused the United States of secretly conducting
biological weapons experiments in a laboratory in Georgia, another former
Soviet republic that, like Ukraine, has ambitions to join NATO and the
European Union.
AFP
