US official says Russia trying to ‘gaslight’ world with chemical weapons claims

Olivia Dalton, spokesperson for the US Mission to the United Nations says Russia is trying to “gaslight” the world by accusing the US of “biological activities” in Ukraine.

“This is exactly the kind of false flag effort we have warned Russia might initiate to justify a biological or chemical weapons attack,” she says. “We’re not going to let Russia gaslight the world or use the UN Security Council as a venue for promoting their disinformation.“

“Russia has a well-documented history of using chemical weapons and has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law” as well as “a track record of falsely accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating,” Dalton says, after the UN scheduled a Security Council meeting to discuss Russia’s claims.

A tweet from Russia’s Ministry of Defense refers to a “briefing on the results of the analysis of documents related to the military biological activities of the United States on the territory of Ukraine.”

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric says the World Health Organization, which has been working with the Ukrainian government, “said they are unaware of any activity on the part of the Ukrainian government which is inconsistent with its international treaty obligations, including on chemical weapons or biological weapons.”

At a Security Council meeting on Syria’s chemical weapons held earlier in the day, US deputy ambassador Richard Mills said that unfortunately Syria has help on the council from its ally Russia, which he said “has repeatedly spread disinformation regarding Syria’s repeated use of chemical weapons.”

“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 said.