Jen Psaki Ukraine - White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki holds a press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 25, 2022./Leah Millis
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 () - The White House urged China to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Sunday, as Moscow's attacks on its neighbor continued and Russian President Vladimir Putin put nuclear forces on alert.
Jen Psaki Ukraine
China implemented some of the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies on Russia over the invasion and spoke out in support of Ukraine's sovereignty last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in an interview with MSNBC.
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"This is not the time to stand on the sidelines. This is the time to speak out and condemn the actions of President Putin and Russia that are invading sovereign nations," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in an interview with MSNBC.
He said US President Joe Biden had not spoken recently with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and did not rule out future phone conversations.
"But there is also an important step for the Chinese leadership to look at themselves and really assess where they want to stand because the history books are being written," said Psaki.
Biden himself only made a veiled jab at China last week after Beijing refused to call Moscow's actions an invasion and urged all countries to exercise restraint.
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"Putin will be a pariah on the international stage. Any country that allows Russia's open aggression against Ukraine will be tarnished by association," Biden said, without naming China.
Psaki's comments on Sunday were sharper, coming hours after Putin ordered his military command to put Russia's nuclear deterrent on high alert in the face of a major Western response to its war on Ukraine.
China is Russia's largest trading partner for exports and imports, buying a third of Russia's crude oil exports in 2020 and supplying it with industrial products from mobile phones and computers to toys and clothes.
The United States, Britain, Japan, Canada, Australia and the EU unveiled more sanctions against Moscow on top of last week's sanctions, including Germany's move to freeze an $11 billion gas pipeline from Russia. 1 of 2 White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Wednesday, March 9, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)1 of 2 White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a White House press briefing, Wednesday, March 9, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semanski)
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WASHINGTON (AP) - The Biden administration publicly warned Wednesday that Russia could try to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, as the White House rejected Russian claims of illegal chemical weapons development in the country it invaded.
This week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova - without evidence - accused Ukraine of running a chemical and biological weapons laboratory with US support. White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the Russian claims "absurd" and said they could be part of Russia's attempt to lay the groundwork for its own use of weapons of mass destruction against Ukraine.
"This is all a clear ploy by Russia to try to justify a premeditated, unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine," Psaki wrote on Wednesday. "Now that Russia has made these false claims and China appears to have supported this propaganda, we should all be watching Russia use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine or set up a false flag operation using those weapons."
The US has been warning for months about a Russian "false flag" operation to create a pretext for the invasion. Wednesday's warning suggested Russia may try to stake a claim for a further escalation of the two-week conflict, in which Russian offensives have been slowed by stronger-than-expected Ukrainian defenses but not stopped.
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Dmitry Chumakov, Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, repeated the accusations on Wednesday, urging Western media to cover "the news about the secret biological laboratory in Ukraine."
The international community has assessed for years that Russia has used chemical weapons before in assassination attempts against Putin's enemies such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its own people in a decade-long civil war.
Asked by a Russian journalist about the allegations, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "At this point, we have no information to support this report or the allegations regarding this type of laboratory."
"Our colleagues at the World Health Organization who work with the Ukrainian government say they are not aware of any activity by the Ukrainian government that is inconsistent with international treaty obligations, including regarding chemical weapons or biological weapons," Dujarric added.
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Russia has a long history of spreading misinformation about US biological weapons research. In the 1980s, Russian intelligence spread the conspiracy theory that the US created HIV in a laboratory. Most recently, Russian state media spread theories about dangerous research in laboratories in Ukraine and Georgia.
Conspiracy theories about a US-run laboratory in Ukraine have been picked up by state-controlled media in China and are now circulating on online message boards popular with COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and right-wing groups in the US.
Philippa Lentsos, senior lecturer in science and international security at King's College London, said there is no “U.S. lab" in Ukraine. Instead, he said in an email, there are labs in that country that have received money through the US Department of Defense's threat reduction program.
Associated Press writers Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia and Edith Lederer at the UN contributed to this report.
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