Ukraine soldiers describe ‘almost daily’ illegal gas attacks as invaders seek to dislodge them from embedded positions
Russia has been accused of systematically using illegal chemical gas attacks against Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukrainian troops told the Daily Telegraph that they have been subjected to regular attacks from small drones dropping teargas and other chemicals.
Continue reading...Three others also subject to warrants over use of sarin gas in two attacks in Syria in August 2013 that killed more than 1,000 people
A French court has issued an international arrest warrant for the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for complicity in war crimes against humanity linked to chemical weapon attacks on civilians.
Three others – including Assad’s brother Maher, head of an elite army unit – are also subject to warrants over the use of banned sarin gas in two attacks in August 2013 that killed more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children.
Continue reading...Watchdog report follows years-long investigation into strike that killed 43 civilians in Damascus suburb
Investigators from the global chemical weapons agency have found the Syrian regime responsible for a poison gas attack that killed 43 people in a suburb of Damascus in 2018, leaving victims choking to death in the basement of a home.
In a report nearly five in the making, the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found the canisters carrying poison gas had been dropped by a Syrian air force helicopter over Douma – then one of the last opposition strongholds near the Syrian capital.
Continue reading...Police detained 32-year-old man in town near Dortmund after tip-off from foreign agency believed to be the FBI
German police have arrested an Iranian man suspected of planning a chemical attack motivated by Islamic extremism.
The 32-year-old was seized at his flat shortly before midnight on Saturday in the town of Castrop-Rauxel, close to Dortmund in western Germany. The arrest followed a tip-off from a foreign intelligence agency that the man had obtained toxins, including cyanide and ricin, with which he planned to carry out a terror attack, authorities said on Sunday.
Continue reading...Campaigners hope agreement will change military norms, though it was not endorsed by countries including Russia, Israel and China
Eighty countries led by the US, UK and France have signed a declaration in Dublin pledging to refrain from urban bombing, the first time countries have agreed to curb the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
The international agreement is a product of more than three years of negotiation – predating the war in Ukraine – but was not endorsed by several major military powers, including Russia, China, Israel and India.
Continue reading...Over 50 specialists skilled in delivering crude explosive working with Putin’s forces
Technicians linked to the Syrian military’s infamous barrel bombs that have wreaked devastation across much of the country have been deployed to Russia to help potentially prepare for a similar campaign in the Ukraine war, European officials believe.
Intelligence officers say more than 50 specialists, all with vast experience in making and delivering the crude explosive, have been in Russia for several weeks working alongside officials from Vladimir Putin’s military.
Continue reading...Governor of Luhansk urges people to evacuate as Vladimir Putin insists Moscow will achieve its ‘noble’ aims
Civilians have fled eastern Ukraine in advance of a forecast attack, as Russian forces closed in on the ruins of Mariupol – where 21,000 civilians have reportedly died – and Vladimir Putin said Moscow’s invasion would proceed “calmly” and to plan.
Ukrainian forces in the east dug in on Tuesday for a major new Russian offensive, with the governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Gaidai, urging all residents to evacuate as soon as possible using agreed humanitarian corridors. “It’s far more scary to remain and to burn in your sleep from a Russian shell,” Gaidai said on social media. “Evacuate: with every day the situation is getting worse. Take your essential items and head to the pickup point.”
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy taking chemical weapons threat ‘seriously’ as Mariupol mayor says thousands have died in devastated port city
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has voiced concerns that Russian forces are preparing “a new stage of terror” that could involve the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, as the mayor of Mariupol said that more than 10,000 civilians had died so far in the Russian siege of his city.
“Today, the occupiers issued a new statement, which testifies to their preparation for a new stage of terror against Ukraine and our defenders,” Zelesnkiy said early on Tuesday. “One of the mouthpieces of the occupiers stated that they could use chemical weapons against the defenders of Mariupol. We take this as seriously as possible.”
US officials pointed to new signs that Russia’s military is gearing up for a major offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, switching its focus after failing in their initial drive to capture Kyiv. A senior US defence official described a long convoy now rolling toward the eastern city of Izyum with artillery, aviation and infantry support, as part of redeployment to the east.
Ukrainian authorities are warning people not to go near what they say are landmines being dropped on Kharkiv. Zelenskiy also spoke of “hundreds of thousands of dangerous objects” including mines and unexploded shells left by Russian forces in regions in Ukraine’s north.
Austria’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, has said he told Putin during frosty talks that “all those responsible” for war crimes must be brought to justice and warned that western sanctions would intensify as long as people kept dying in Ukraine.
Sweden’s ruling party has begun debating whether the country should join Nato, and neighbouring Finland expects to reach a decision within weeks, as Moscow warned that the Nordic nations’ accession would “not bring stability” to Europe.
Continue reading...Fears claims of plot to use birds to spread disease could be pretext for biological attack by Russia itself
Russia has accused Ukraine and the US at the UN security council of a plot to use migratory birds and bats to spread pathogens, raising alarm among other council members that the accusations could be intended to provide cover for future Russian use of biological weapons.
The Russian permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, delivered a lengthy account of the alleged biological weapons plot, and said the birds, bats and insects supposedly intended to spread disease would cross Ukraine’s western border.
Continue reading...The US tells the UN that Russia has a well-documented history of using chemical and biological weapons, after Russia warned about the potential for the ‘uncontrolled spread of bio agents’
Guardian reporter Peter Beaumont brings us this morning run-down from Lviv.
Russian jets bombed cities in the west of Ukraine in the early hours of Friday morning hitting Lviv, Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, as the Kremlin’s war continued to creep further into Ukraine.
Continue reading...Latest updates: prime minister suggests further sanctions to come in future
Chelsea FC will still be allowed to play matches despite its owner, Roman Abramovich, being sanctioned, the government says. It explains:
Given the significant impact that today’s sanctions would have on Chelsea football club and the potential knock on effects of this, the government has this morning published a licence which authorises a number of football-related activities to continue at Chelsea. This includes permissions for the club to continue playing matches and other football related activity which will in turn protect the Premier League, the wider football pyramid, loyal fans and other clubs. This licence will only allow certain explicitly named actions to ensure the designated individual is not able to circumvent UK sanctions. The licence will be kept under constant review and we will work closely with the football authorities.
There can be no safe havens for those who have supported Putin’s vicious assault on Ukraine.
Today’s sanctions are the latest step in the UK’s unwavering support for the Ukrainian people. We will be ruthless in pursuing those who enable the killing of civilians, destruction of hospitals and illegal occupation of sovereign allies.
Continue reading...White House press secretary Jen Psaki says false Russian claims about alleged US chemical weapons in Ukraine may be pretext
Britain and the US fear Russia could be setting the stage to use a chemical weapon in Ukraine after Kremlin officials alleged without firm evidence that the US had been supporting a bioweapons programme in the country.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday that Russia had been making “false claims about alleged US biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine”, and added that the allegations had been echoed in Beijing.
Continue reading...It’s time for the US and its allies to show their steel in the face of Putin’s aggression. We have learned that nothing else will work
The Syria crisis continues unnoticed. It holds key lessons for the west about Putin yet it has gone virtually unnoticed by the rest of the world. War crimes and crimes against humanity continue in the Russian-sponsored dictatorship, even as some misguided leaders want to usher Bashar al-Assad, the architect of these crimes, back into acceptable society.
We can rest assured that the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, unlike Assad, is not welcoming Putin with open arms. But in responding to the Ukraine emergency, there are lessons the west can and should learn from the situation in Syria.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a chemical weapons expert, fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge and an adviser to the Union of Syrian Medical Charities
Continue reading...Raised levels of cholinesterase are important piece in the puzzle of Kremlin critic’s sudden illness
High levels of the chemical cholinesterase in tests on Alexey Navalny are a compelling clue that he was poisoned with a nerve agent, experts have said.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical and biological counter-terrorism expert, said the presence of cholinesterase inhibitors suggested Navaly was suffering from nerve agent poisoning. Raised levels of cholinesterase were an important “jigsaw piece in the puzzle”, he said.
Continue reading...For the first time, the world’s chemical weapons watchdog has directly accused Syria’s leadership of ordering illegal attacks on its people
There is a temptation, to which some European governments and politicians are prey, to imagine that Syria’s civil war is over. It would, after all, be politically convenient if the millions of refugees languishing in Turkey and Jordan were to go home, rather than serve as a constant reminder of the EU’s chronic fear of migrants.
An end to the war would remove a prime cause of instability in the Levant and eastern Mediterranean region. Russia and Iran would have less excuse to play games of geopolitical chance with civilian lives. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s irascible president, would have less to complain about.
Continue reading...Report by UN-aligned body that oversees chemical weapons use is hailed by rights groups
The UN-aligned body that oversees chemical weapons use has for the first time blamed the Syrian regime for using sarin gas on the battlefield in a report hailed by rights groups as a landmark moment with implications for war crimes investigations.
The report, released on Wednesday by the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), accuses the Syrian Air Force of twice using sarin to attack the town of Ltamenah in late March 2017. It also found that regime aircraft had bombed the same town with chlorine gas in the same week.
Continue reading...Watchdog to release first report blaming president for attacks during the conflict
The UN’s chemical weapons watchdog is expected to release its first report explicitly blaming Bashar al-Assad for sarin and chlorine gas attacks on civilians in Syria as efforts to establish accountability for the use of chemical agents in the nine-year-old conflict gain momentum.
Observers anticipate that public and classified versions of a report by a new unit at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will be published on Wednesday, close to the anniversaries of a major chlorine attack on the then rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma that killed at least 85 people in 2018 as well as a deadly sarin attack on Khan Sheikhun in 2017 which killed at least 89. The report is believed to focus on 2017 attacks on the village of al-Lataminah.
Continue reading...UN watchdog’s investigation rebuts claims it manipulated evidence of Douma incident
A Russia-led campaign that claimed the UN weapons watchdog had manipulated evidence of a Syrian government chemical weapons attack has been dealt a blow by an official inquiry showing that two former employees hailed as whistleblowers had little direct access to the evidence and inflated their role.
The independent inquiry commissioned by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) shows that one of the two had never been on the team investigating the April 2018 attack in Douma and the other was only on the team for a brief period.
Continue reading...Congresswoman calls on US Syria envoy to give full briefing on October incident in border town
Four US congressional Democrats have written to Donald Trump’s Syria envoy asking him to spell out what information the US has about the alleged use of white phosphorus by Turkey against Syrian Kurdish civilians in October.
Ilhan Omar and three of her colleagues in the House of Representatives called on Jim Jeffrey to provide a full briefing – in private if necessary – into whether it believes the incident during the Turkish invasion two months ago amounts to a war crime.
Continue reading...Whistleblower claims OPCW’s findings misrepresented some facts over 2018 chlorine attack
The head of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog has defended its conclusion that chlorine was used in an attack in Syria in April 2018, after a whistleblower alleged the report misrepresented some of the facts amid Russian claims that the watchdog is being politicised by the west.
WikiLeaks at the weekend published an email from a member of the fact-finding team that investigated the attack which accused the body of altering the original findings of investigators to make evidence of a chemical attack seem more conclusive.
Continue reading...