Russia’s use of chemical weapons is a “real threat” said Joe Biden on Wednesday March 23.
Russian chemical weapons attack in Ukraine is ‘a credible threat’, warns Joe Biden this Wednesday, March 23 at the beginning of the afternoon. Since the start of the conflict, Russia has posed the threat of a war destructive and limitless. If Moscow claims not to target civilians, the bombings of shopping centers and shelters in city centers show the opposite.
Just yesterday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov raised the issue of the use of nuclear weapons only in the event of existential threat. “We have an internal security doctrine, it’s public, you can read there all the reasons for the use of nuclear weapons. And if it’s an existential threat to our country, then they can be used in agreement with our doctrine,” he said. However, without setting a limit on the level of threat.
Vladimir Putin had, a few days after the launch of his offensive, declared that he had put his nuclear deterrent force on alert. A rhetoric from the Kremlin between a bluff and a real threat that Westerners have difficulty measuring.
Small nuclear weapons
Fears are directed in particular at Moscow’s use of nuclear weapons of small size. “We are monitoring this daily and as best we can. We have seen nothing that leads us to conclude that we need to change our strategic deterrence posture,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday.
fear of chemical weapons
Another red line about to be crossed, if it has not already been crossed with the various war crimes perpetrated by Russia for almost a month, the use of chemical weapons and organic.
The first consists in the use of a “product chemical used to cause death or other damage by its toxic action.” According to the definition of the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). But also “ammunition, devices and other materials specifically designed to transform into a weapon toxic chemicals also fall within the definition of chemical weapons”.
Among them, different categories identified by the OPCW: agents suffocating, vesicants (irritants), hemotoxic (which poison the blood) and neurotoxic like sarin gasSoman gas or VX one drop of which is capable of killing a man.
Arms organic are they “complex systems that disseminate pathogenic organisms or toxinsto harm or kill individuals, animals, or plants”, according to the United Nations definition, reported by Le Figaro. Their destructive and toxic potential is even greater because they can be used “to infect the livestock or agricultural production with the aim of causing food shortages and economic loss, to create environmental disasters, and to introduce widespread disease, fear and distrust into the population.
Contaminate the whole earth
“Chemical weapons are inert toxic substances, biological weapons are pathogenic agents, most of them living, biological: bacteria or viruses. If they are disseminated in nature, they can, as we ‘has seen with the Covid-19, contaminating the whole earth “explains to Figaro Olivier Lepick, associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) and specialist in chemical and biological weapons.
But this threat remains, according to the researcher, unlikely at a time when the armies are better and better prepared to face this kind of attack. Little military interest therefore, but a strong psychological power over the populations.
To date, only North Korea and Egypt have still not signed the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Israel and Burma have signed it without ratifying it. According to the OAIC, 99% of the stocks would have been destroyed.