Could this be a point of no return? The United Kingdom is trying to verify information about the possible use of chemical weapons in Ukraine by Russian forces in Mariupol, a strategic port city that has been under siege for more than a month, British Foreign Secretary Liz announced on Monday. Truss.
This “would constitute a brutal escalation in this conflict”
“Reports indicate that Russian forces may have used chemical agents in an attack on the population of Mariupol. We are urgently working with our partners to verify the information, ”said Liz Truss on her Twitter account.
Any use of such weapons “would constitute a brutal escalation in this conflict and we will hold (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and his regime to account”, she added.
According to a Ukrainian parliamentarian, people suffer from respiratory failure
Ukrainian parliamentarian Ivanna Klympush for her part indicated that Russia used an “unknown substance” in Mariupol, where several people suffer from respiratory failure according to her. “Most likely chemical weapons,” she tweeted.
The Ukrainian Azov regiment, entrenched in Mariupol, had previously claimed that a Russian drone had dropped a “toxic substance” on soldiers and civilians in Mariupol, in a message published on Monday on the Telegram messenger, specifying that several people were suffering from problems there. respiratory and neurological.
According to Andrii Biletsky, the founder of the Azov battalion, three people were poisoned there by an unknown toxic substance, he said in a video posted on Telegram: “Three people show clear signs of poisoning by chemical warfare products but without catastrophic consequences”.
AFP was not immediately able to independently verify these claims.
The representative of the separatist army in Donetsk, Eduard Basurin, quoted Monday by the Russian agency Ria Novosti, affirmed for his part that the troops which besiege Mariupol could resort to “chemical troops which will find a way to bring out the moles out of their hole”, in reference to the entrenched Ukrainian soldiers. Russia has denied committing war crimes during its offensive in Ukraine, launched on February 24.