Thursday, May 12, 2022

Ukraine conflict: Russian chemical attack claim fact-checked

Russia is using a familiar tactic to blame an adversary for attacks it has not carried out - on this occasion accusing Ukrainian forces of blowing up a fertiliser storage facility.

The purpose of the attack, says Russia's defence ministry, was so that the Ukrainians could then accuse Russian forces of having launched a chemical weapons attack.

Russia also claims that the Ukrainian security forces have attempted to set up a second "false flag" event, by appealing for bodies to be used to "simulate a Russian air attack".

There's no evidence that either of these claims is true.

Moscow has a history of falsely accusing its opponents of staging "provocations" which either never happened at all, or were subsequently carried out by themselves or their allies.



What has Moscow said?

A Russian Ministry of Defence briefing on 11 May asserted that Ukrainian forces had "carried out an explosion of a tanker with fertiliser, presumably ammonium nitrate, which resulted in a cloud of orange smoke that dissipated after some time".

According to Moscow, the aim of the explosion, which occurred in the Kharkiv region, was to accuse Russia of using chemical weapons in order to "extract additional military aid from the West by the Kyiv regime".

No evidence was given in support of the claim that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the explosion.


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odays #Hashtags.

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                3.        #FYP
                4.        #MortgageRates
                5.        #BorderWars
                6.        #Floods
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                8.        #WOY
                9.        #Floods
                10.      #Ukraine.

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