Biden warns of Nato response if Russia uses chemical weapons

BRUSSELS • United States President Joe Biden has warned that Nato will "respond" if Russian President Vladimir Putin uses a chemical weapon in his war on Ukraine.

"We will respond if he uses it. The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use," Mr Biden said after a Nato summit in Brussels on Thursday.

The Kremlin's refusal to rule out the use of nuclear weapons, and a steady flow of Russian disinformation about chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine has left Kyiv and its allies fearful of an even-more serious conflagration.

Russia is already accused of using phosphorus bombs and indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas - something the US has branded a war crime.

But the Kremlin yesterday accused Mr Biden of seeking to divert attention from his country's chemical and biological weapons programme after he said Russia could use such weapons in Ukraine. "We see this as an attempt to divert attention to some kind of ephemeral, allegedly existing threat against the backdrop of a scandal that is flaring up in the world involving chemical and biological weapons programmes that the United States has been carrying out in various countries, including Ukraine," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Hours later, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on board Air Force One that the US has "no intention" of using chemical weapons under any circumstance even if Russia uses such weapons in Ukraine.

"There will be a severe price if Russia uses chemical weapons. And I won't go beyond that other than to say the United States has no intention of using chemical weapons, period, under any circumstance," he told reporters.

On Thursday, Mr Biden called on the Group of 20 (G-20) to eject Russia, and also said he and European leaders are developing strategies to stave off a global hunger crisis stemming from the invasion and its agricultural disruptions. Mr Biden said the US and its allies planned a new organisation to crack down on violations of Russian sanctions, including any Chinese efforts to keep its diplomatic ally's economy afloat.

Mr Biden said China knows its economic future is tied to the West, after warning Chinese leader Xi Jinping that Beijing could regret siding with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "I made no threats but I made it clear to him, made sure he understood the consequences of helping Russia," he said of his call last Friday with Mr Xi.

Mr Biden said Thursday's whirlwind of meetings illustrated the Western world's unity against Mr Putin's aggression, and that the Russian leader had failed to fracture the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), which is backing Ukraine with weaponry and humanitarian aid.

"The very thing that Putin has tried to do from the beginning, and I've been saying this since my days as vice-president of the United States, is to break up Nato," Mr Biden told reporters at a meeting with the President of the European Council, Mr Charles Michel.

Mr Biden yesterday travelled to a town near the Polish-Ukrainian border, trying to signal Western resolve against a Russian invasion that has increasingly turned into a grinding war of attrition.

He jetted into the eastern Polish town of Rzeszow - bringing the US President less than 80km from a war-torn nation still struggling to repel a brutal Russian invasion.

His first stop was to meet soldiers from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division stationed in the area of Rzeszow airport - part of Nato's presence in the alliance's eastern flank - in what is being seen as an assurance of American support in case the war spreads westward.

BLOOMBERG, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS