UN Security Council to meet Friday on biological weapons at Moscow’s request

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Ukraine Permanent Representative to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya (R) walks to his seat during an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Ukraine in New York on February 23, 2022. – The United States and Albania will soon submit their draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council, seeking to condemn Russia for its recent Ukraine actions, diplomatic sources said Wednesday. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP)

UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) – 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.

A United Nations vehicle is seen outside the hotel where the international experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are staying in Damascus on April 19, 2018. – UN security experts have said they were negotiating with Syrian and Russian authorities for international chemical inspectors to deploy to the site of an alleged toxic gas attack near Damascus, after a reconnaissance mission came under fire. The team from the world’s chemical arms watchdog has not yet been able to begin its field work in Douma, where dozens were killed in a suspected April 7 gas attack, as Western powers warn that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime may attempt to remove crucial evidence. (Photo by LOUAI BESHARA / AFP)

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.”

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 28: Richard M. Mills, Deputy Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, speaks during a Security Council meeting to address the invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations headquarters on on February 28, 2022 in New York City. The U.N. Security Council voted on Sunday to hold a rare emergency special session of the General Assembly to discuss Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The meeting gave all 193 members of the global body a chance to present their views on the invasion. Russia voted against the resolution but they did not have veto power under U.N. regulations. On Sunday Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces to be on high alert, further increasing tensions. The two sides agreed to meet for negotiations on the border with Belarus, as the European Union moved to close its airspace to all Russian planes. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)

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.

© Agence France-Presse