There are fears Russia could use non-conventional weapons and, in so doing, cross a major red line.
Russia called a special emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday to discuss its claims Ukraine plans to develop biological weapons. This has been dismissed by Ukraine and the US as a "false flag" - a claim intended to justify Russia's possible use itself of a chemical weapon against cities in Ukraine., where the government says scientists have worked on protecting the population from diseases like Covid.
All of these so-called chemical agents can be used in warfare in artillery shells, bombs and missiles. But all are strictly prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, signed by the vast majority of nations, including Russia. The global watchdog for chemical weapons is in the Hague, Netherlands, and is called the OPCW - the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons - which monitors the unlawful use of these weapons and tries to prevent their proliferation.
There is no evidence that Russia used these weapons while helping its ally defeat rebels in Syria but it provided massive military support for the regime ofThe fact is that if you have a protracted war where the attacking military are trying to break the will of defending forces then chemical weapons are, unfortunately, one very effective way to achieve that. It's what Syria did in Aleppo.
Russia, when it was part of the Soviet Union, controlled a truly massive biological weapons programme, run by an agency called Biopreparat. that employed about 70,000 people.
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