There Could Russia use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Ukraine? The White House has been raising the alarm for weeks and in that case, according to NATO, the Western response would be ‘adequate’, in the sense – to use the words of British Prime Minister Johnson – of ‘catastrophic’. The analysis of today’s Sole 24 Ore explores this eventuality, assuming the various scenarios. “The armies stationed on the eastern borders of the Alliance, as well as the Ukrainian one, would have already received and prepared the necessary to protect themselves”, explains the article. He observes: “Sibylline communications, in which there is also a lot of propaganda, which however hide some steps taken by Russia in this direction”.
Which? Not only the fact that Vladimir Putin has already threatened catastrophes during the announcement of the ‘special military operation’, explains Il Sole24 Ore, but he himself and other members of the government “have accused Ukraine of having hundreds of laboratories at work. on biological, chemical and atomic weapons, and to have the proof “. On the Ukrainian front, as regards the biological weaponsthe international scientific community immediately pointed out that Ukraine did not have, before the war, laboratories with a level of security that could handle dangerous bacteria viruses, but at the moment the accusations between Moscow and Kiev are being rebutted and it is not possible get to no certainty.
The situation is different for the chemical weapons: “Virtually any plant producing substances such as chlorine or phosphorus derivatives could synthesize the necessary raw materials.” Russia “has facilities suitable for all three types of weapons,” explains the newspaper’s analysis. He observes: “That he can make use of it is suggested by the so-called false flag he is waving, that is, by the creation of incidents that lay the groundwork for an attack of that kind.”
Regarding the actual existence on Russian soil of the materials suitable for such an attack, the daily notes that both Russia and Ukraine have joined the International Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, which obliged them to destroy everything that already existed in 2017. Il Sole notes that while the checks that took place in Ukraine have always confirmed the destruction of the arsenals, “the poisonings of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, which took place in Great Britain in 2018, and of Alexei Navalny in Russia in 2020 , both with substances of the Novichock category, theoretically destroyed for some time, have posed heavy questions about everything the Russian authorities have said over the years “. Russia has always denied any involvement.
On the motivations that could push the Russians to use weapons “from which their troops should also defend themselves”, according to analysts “the purpose is clear: to terrorize the populations, rather than dramatically increase the number of victims”, explains the newspaper. As for controls, to prove the accusations against Ukraine, Moscow should invoke the inspections of the OPCPW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons), but it cannot do so because it would have to consent to investigations also on its territory. Remote systems remain, starting from satellite images, and those of field reports: the symptoms are unequivocal, and biological samples become irrefutable proof.
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