New Delhi: British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss tweeted Tuesday that Britain was “urgently working with partners” to verify if Russian forces had used chemical agents in an attack on the people of Mariupol in Ukraine.
Truss said, “Any use of such weapons would be a callous escalation in this conflict and we will hold Putin and his regime to account.”
Probe into a possible chemical attack on the southern Ukrainian port city on Monday is ongoing, reports said.
The US too “remains concerned”, with press secretary John Kirby saying the Pentagon could not independently confirm the “use of riot control agents”.
Ukraine’s Azov regiment – which is defending Mariupol — said in a Telegram post that three soldiers were injured by a “poisonous substance of unknown origin” in an attack on Monday. The substance was used during a drone attack in the city’s Azovstal metals plant. No soldier was seriously injured, the battalion said.
On Monday night, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said use of chemical weapons would mark a “new stage of terror against Ukraine”. He renewed his call to western countries to equip his people with arms.
Zelenskyy said: “Unfortunately, we are not getting as much as we need to end this war sooner… I am sure that we will get almost everything we need, but not only time is being lost. The lives of Ukrainians are being lost — lives that can no longer be returned.”
US President Joe Biden had said in March that NATO would respond if Putin used chemical weapons. “The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use,” Biden said on 25 March in Europe.
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