The administration of US President Joe Biden has warned that Russia may be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, the Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki dismissed Moscow's claims that an illegal chemical weapons program had been developed in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said yesterday that Russia wants the United States to explain to the world why it has supported a military biological program in Ukraine. Kyiv has rejected allegations of such a program, and the Pentagon has described them as absurd, according to Reuters.

A White House spokeswoman described Moscow's allegations as “ridiculous” and said they may be part of Russia's attempt to pave the way for it to use such weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.

“All this is an obvious maneuver by Russia to try to justify future pre-planned, unprovoked and unjustified attacks in Ukraine”, Jen Psaki wrote on Twitter. “Now that Russia has made these false accusations, and China seems to justify this propaganda, we must all be on the lookout for the possible use of chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine by Russia or for the creation of a false pretext.”

The international community has long believed that Russia used chemical weapons to assassinate Putin's enemies, such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who used chemical weapons against his own people during more than a decade of civil war.

Asked by a Russian journalist about Moscow's allegations, Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the UN had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction being produced in Ukraine.

Russia claims that during its military invasion of Ukraine, it gained access to documents proving that components for biological weapons were being developed in Ukrainian biological laboratories near the Russian border.

/Nova

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