A former British Army Colonel and chemical weapons expert has warned Russia could look to use chemical warfare – as Ukraine gains ground and pushes troops back.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said “he wasn’t surprised” that the threat of chemical weapons has been brought into discussions.
In an interview on GB News the decorated former Military commander said: “As has been reported very clearly over the last week, the Russian forces are bogged down and in fact the Ukrainian forces are taking ground and pushing Russia back. Russia expected to roll into Ukraine and take the place in a few days. It’s now lost thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks, and in some areas is on the retreat and this is not the playbook that Putin was expecting.”
As a former member of the British military and an expert in chemical weapons from his time serving in Syria, Bretton-Gordon said there are lessons to be learnt from what Putin and the Russian Army has done in previous fighting such as in Syria.
He said: “I’ve seen the Russians up close in Syria and when things have gone badly there, that is when they have looked to irregular weapons and drastic things like bombing hospitals and schools.
“If they follow the Syrian playbook and things continue to go badly, as a number of NATO leaders have suggested, they may well resort to chemical and biological weapons as well and ultimately if they are on the edge of defeat Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons.”
Bretton-Gordon added that it would ultimately depend on what chemicals are used and where they are targeted.
He said: “I’m speaking today from Salisbury where the Russians attacked Sergei Skripal with the potential to kill hundreds if not thousands of people. On the other side, you have toxic industrial chemicals like chlorine which were widely used in Syria and I suspect if Russia decided to use the latter, then that might not lead to direct intervention by NATO.”
But if the Russians used deadly nerve agents like Novichok, which has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people, then NATO might well strike as it did in Syria after the use of nerve agents in 2017 and 2018.”
His comments come days after the former head of British Army General Mike Jackson also told GB News we couldn’t rule out World War Three as tensions between Ukraine and Russia escalate.
