Calls by Moscow for a formal inquiry into claims that the United States is running a covert biological weapons program in Ukraine were thwarted at the U.N. Security Council after the United States, the UK, and France all voted against the proposal.
In the vote, which took place on Nov. 2, only Russia and China voted in favor of the proposal, while the remaining 10 nonpermanent council members abstained from casting ballots.
Speaking shortly afterward, Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy U.N. representative, expressed disappointment with the vote’s outcome.
“We are extremely disappointed by the fact that the council failed to employ the mechanism of the Convention on Biological and Toxin Weapons,” Polyansky was quoted as saying by Russia’s TASS news agency.
The Biological Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1975, prohibits signatories from developing, producing, or using biological and toxin weapons.
“Irrespective of the result of today’s voting, we still have questions for the United States and Ukraine,” Polyansky said.
“[Moscow] will continue making efforts to establish all facts connected with the activities of U.S. biological laboratories in Ukraine.”
Washington and Kyiv, for their part, have both dismissed the allegation as a “conspiracy theory.”
When the proposal was first tabled last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Washington’s envoy to the U.N., described the claims as “pure fabrications brought forth without a shred of evidence.”
Speaking to council members on Oct. 27, she said Moscow’s accusations were “an attempt to distract from the atrocities Russian forces are carrying out in Ukraine and a desperate tactic to justify an unjustifiable war.”
It wasn’t the first time that Russia has made such claims. In March, only weeks after the launch of its “special military operation” in Ukraine, Moscow accused the United States of using Ukrainian laboratories for the development of biological weapons.
At the time, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby described the allegation as “classic Russian propaganda,” while the U.S. State Department accused Moscow of “inventing false pretexts ... to justify its horrific actions in Ukraine.”
Yet despite repeated denials by both Kyiv and Washington, Russian President Vladimir Putin has continued to give voice to the claim.
Moscow Summons UK Envoy
In a related development, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned UK ambassador Deborah Bronnert on Nov. 3 over claims that British military “specialists” played a role in an attack last week on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.On Oct. 29, Russian naval ships in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, where the Black Sea Fleet is headquartered, came under attack by multiple air and water-borne drones. According to Russian sources, a minesweeping vessel was slightly damaged in the attack.
Shortly afterward, the Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack “under the guidance of British specialists.”
The ministry also claimed that the same unit of “British specialists” had been responsible for a September attack on a strategic energy pipeline linking gas fields in Russia to Northern Europe.
The Kremlin’s assertions drew spirited denials from officials in London.
“We’re carefully monitoring the situation, but it is right to not be drawn into these sorts of distractions, which are part of the Russian playbook,” a spokesman for Rishi Sunak, the UK’s newly appointed prime minister, said on Nov. 1.
The following day, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters that her ministry planned to summon Bronnert and present her with evidence of British involvement in the attacks.
“There can be no doubt that British intelligence services were involved in the terrorist attack on the Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol ... and the act of sabotage against the Nord Stream pipeline,” Zakharova said.
The British ambassador would be furnished with “relevant materials” pertaining to Moscow’s claims, which would later be “made available to the public at large,” she said.
On the morning of Nov. 3, Bronnert arrived at the Foreign Ministry building in Moscow, where a small crowd chanted anti-UK slogans and held placards reading “Britain is a terrorist state.”
She reportedly remained inside the Foreign Ministry for approximately 30 minutes before leaving the building.
As of the time of writing, there was no immediate statement from either Russian or UK authorities regarding what was discussed at the meeting.
