Biden says Putin could use chemical, biological weapons in Ukraine
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[March 22, 2022]
By Natalia Zinets and James Mackenzie
MARIUPOL/LVIV/KYIV, Ukraine (Reuters) -
Ukraine's military warned the public on Tuesday of more indiscriminate
Russian shelling from bogged-down Russian troops, and U.S. President Joe
Biden issued his strongest warning yet that Russia is considering using
chemical weapons.
Amid the devastation caused by Russia's unceasing bombardment of
Ukrainian cities, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy highlighted the death of
a 96-year-old survivor of Nazi concentration camps, killed in his flat
by shelling in Kharkiv.
Nearly four weeks into their invasion, Russian troops have failed to
capture any major Ukrainian city and have been halted on nearly all
fronts, but are hammering residential districts with artillery, missiles
and air strikes.
Russian forces were expected to continue to attack critical
infrastructure with "high-precision weapons and indiscriminate
munitions”, Ukraine's armed forces said in a statement.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Mar/22/images/ads/current/hurtexcavating_daily_sda_SFARM_2022.png)
Russia has been saying in recent weeks that Ukraine might possess
chemical or biological weapons. Biden said those accusations were not
merely false, but a sign that President Vladimir Putin might be planning
to use such weapons himself.
"Now he's talking about new false flags he's setting up including,
asserting that we in America have biological as well as chemical weapons
in Europe, simply not true," Biden said at a business event on Monday.
"They are also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical
weapons in Ukraine. That's a clear sign he's considering using both of
those."
Putin calls the war, the biggest attack on a European state since World
War Two, a "special military operation" to disarm Ukraine and protect it
from "Nazis". The West calls that a false pretext for an unprovoked war
of aggression.
In an address overnight, Zelenskiy drew attention to the death of Boris
Romanchenko, a Holocaust survivor killed when his flat in besieged
Kharkiv was shelled last week.
"Please think about how many things he has come through," said Zelenskiy.
"But (he) was killed by a Russian strike, which hit an ordinary Kharkiv
multi-storey building. With each day of this war, it becomes more
obvious what 'denazification' means to them."
A memorial for the survivors of the Nazi concentration camp at
Buchenwald said Romanchenko had served for many years as a vice
president of the Buchenwald-Dora International Committee, devoting
himself to documenting Nazi crimes. He had survived the Buchenwald,
Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps in Germany during
World War Two.
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"We mourn the loss of a close friend," the memorial said.
In killing him, "Putin managed to 'accomplish' what even Hitler
couldn't," Ukraine's Defence Ministry said on Twitter.
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![](../images/032222PIX/news_q33.jpg)
A Ukrainian service member walks, as the Russian invasion continues,
in a destroyed village on the front line in the east Kyiv region,
Ukraine March 21, 2022. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Mar/22/images/ads/current/sunag_daily_sda_SFARM_2022.png) BIDEN TRIP TO EUROPE
Biden is due to travel to Europe this week for meetings with allied
leaders to discuss tighter sanctions on Russia, on top of the
unprecedented financial penalties already announced. he discussed
Russia's "brutal" tactics in a call with European leaders on Monday,
the White House said.
Russia's siege and bombardment of Ukrainian cities,
in particular the southern port of Mariupol which has been encircled
for weeks, is increasing pressure for action.
Sanctions have banished Russia from international commerce to a
degree never before visited on such a large economy. But an
exception has largely been carved out for Russian energy exports to
Europe, its biggest oil and gas customer.
EU foreign ministers on Monday disagreed on whether
and how to include energy in sanctions, with Germany saying the bloc
was too dependent on Russian oil to impose an embargo.
NO SURRENDER
The conflict has forced nearly a quarter of Ukraine's 44 million
people from their homes, including more than 3.5 million refugees
who have fled the country, half of them children, in one of the
fastest exoduses ever recorded.
The city of Kharkiv came under increased artillery fire overnight,
regional governor Oleh Synyehubov said in televised comments. The
governor of the Zaporizhzhia region said buses evacuating civilians
from front-line areas were hit by shelling on Monday and four
children were wounded.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk, one of two eastern regions that
Russia demands Ukraine cede to pro-Russian separatists, said the
entire region was now being shelled.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Mar/22/images/ads/current/maskeauction_sda_SFARM_2022.png)
"We are continuing to evacuate people for as long as we can," he
said. "We see that ... the Russians' only goal is to destroy
Ukraine."
On Monday, Ukraine rejected a Russian ultimatum to surrender
Mariupol, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been trapped
under constant bombardment, with no access to food, heat, power or
water for weeks.
A part of Mariupol now held by Russian forces, reached by Reuters on
Sunday, was an eerie wasteland. Several bodies wrapped in blankets
lay by a road. Windows were blasted out and walls were charred
black. People who came out of basements sat on benches amid the
debris, bundled up in coats.
A group of men were digging a grave in a patch of grass by the
roadside.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Stephen Coates and Peter
Graff; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel and Mark Heinrich)
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