PM warns Moscow could use chemical weapons in Ukraine
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said today that Russia might be ready to deploy chemical weapons in Ukraine, echoing White House warnings.
“That the stuff that you’re hearing about chemical weapons is straight out of their playbook,” Johnson told Sky News. “They start saying that there are chemical weapons that have been stored by their opponents or by the Americans.
“And so when they themselves deploy chemical weapons, as I fear they may, they have as a sort of a maskirovka, a fake story ready to go.
“You’ve seen it in Syria. You saw it even in the UK [in Salisbury]. I just note that is what they are already doing. It is a cynical, barbaric government, I’m afraid.”
Johnson’s comments come after the Kremlin confirmed it had been using thermobaric rockets, also called vacuum bombs, which create “incendiary and blast effects”, City PM reported.
Commenting on a possible chemical attack, foreign secretary Liz Truss told CNN it would be President Putin’s latest “grave mistake.”
“We have seen Russia use these weapons before in fields of conflict, but that would be a grave mistake on the part of Russia, adding to the grave mistakes already being made by Putin,” she told the outlet.
According to defence minister James Heappey, the use of chemical warfare would elicit a strong international response.
“I don’t think it’s helpful to get into any firm commitment right now about where that red line sits but I think Putin needs to be very clear that when other countries have used chemical weapons it has caused an international response,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.