United Nations – Russia hastily called a Friday morning U.N. Security Council meeting late on Thursday evening to discuss in open debate what it called “the military biological activities of the US on the territory of Ukraine” — leading the Biden administration to immediately denounce it as a “false flag effort.”
In a comment sent to CBS News, Olivia Dalton, spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said, “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,” Dalton said, adding, “Russia also has a track record of falsely accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating.”
“This is exactly the kind of false flag effort we have warned Russia might initiate to justify a biological or chemical weapons attack,” she said.
The Friday meeting was announced by Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky in a tweet linking to the Russian Ministry of Defense, claiming analysis of documents about U.S. “military biological activities” in Ukraine, with a half-dozen documents attached with graphs and charts.
Washington had warned earlier this week that Russia could escalate the violence in its war in Ukraine with the use of biological or chemical weapons, or by claiming Ukrainian forces used them as a pretext.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday dismissed Russia’s claims as “preposterous” and suggested Russia may be laying the groundwork for using such weapons itself. “This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby also refuted the claims as “absurd” and “classic Russian propaganda.”
“They’re laughable,” Kirby said Wednesday. “We are not, not developing biological or chemical weapons inside Ukraine. It’s not happening.”
The Friday meeting will hear briefings from U.N. disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu and Under Secretary General Rosemary DiCarlo, a former U.S. Mission to the U.N. Ambassador-rank official.
Pamela Falk is CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst and an international lawyer, based at the United Nations.
