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Will Putin use chemical and biological weapons? White House issues stark WARNING

The White House's comments comes after Russia bombed a maternity and children's hospital in the city of Mariupol as part of an airstrike

The White House has warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin could use chemical or biological weapons in an escalation of his attack on Ukraine. Russia recently sank to a new low after it bombed a maternity and children's hospital in the city of Mariupol as part of an airstrike. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack a war crime and said that a number of people are trapped under the wreckage. Ukrainian media says that at least 17 people, including staff and patients, were injured. However, no deaths have been confirmed. 

Zelenskyy posted a footage of the wreckage caused by the strike. "Mariupol. Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital. People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity," he captioned the video. 

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The attack on the hospital was shocking since the Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba had merely hours before the bombing, highlighted how as many as 3,000 babies were surviving without food or medicines. He had urged for a humanitarian corridor to help them flee. Although Moscow had promised a ceasefire in the city so that civilians could be safely evacuated, it failed to keep its word. 

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has criticized Moscow's claims that the US is apparently building bioweapons labs in Ukraine. "This is preposterous. It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent," Psaki wrote on Twitter.

"It’s Russia that has a long and well-documented track record of using chemical weapons, including in attempted assassinations and poisoning of Putin’s political enemies like Alexey Navalny," Psaki said, adding, "Also, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating. In December, Russia falsely accused the U.S. of deploying contractors with chemical weapons in Ukraine."

"This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine," Psaki continued. She added, "Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It’s a clear pattern."

NATO has claimed that Moscow could possibly be targeting civilians trying to flee Ukraine as part of Putin's reign of terror. On Tuesday, March 8, a convoy of buses packed with people fleeing the war was struck, with 21 people, including two children, losing their lives, Ukrainian authorities said. Thousands of people, including civilians and soldiers, are thought to have been killed. 

In one of the most recent cases of atrocities against civilians, a chilling video captured the moment when a Russian ‘special peacekeeping’ tank blew up a car in a completely unprovoked attack. An elderly civilian couple was killed inside the car in the attack. A clip doing the rounds on social media shows a car moving into the frame before halting as a Kremlin tank fires on the vehicle twice, blowing it into pieces.