Chemical weapons are the WMDs the West should fear from Putin, not nuclear
The irony that as the Salisbury Poisonings board of inquiry begins that Putin is once again throwing chemical weapons around in Ukraine cannot be lost on anyone.
In this case his troops are using industrial amounts of chloropicrin, a low-toxicity choking agent rather than the most horrifically poisonous chemical Novichok, the "Salisbury poison", which could have killed thousands in Salisbury and could kill millions in Ukraine if the Russians begin to use it.
It is this chemical WMD that the West must focus on stopping, rather than the unusable tactical nuclear weapons that Putin and his gangsters have threatened us with almost daily for the last 900-plus days.
The video showing a Russian drone dropping a canister of chloropicrin is vivid and is repeated multiple times every day in the Donbass on Ukrainian army trenches.
The downwind hazard of this poisonous cloud can be clearly seen and is having the same devastating impact today as the first use of chlorine did at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915.
In both cases, without effective gas masks the defenders are overrun.
From my time in Syria, where President Assad dropped tonnes of chlorine on civilians, and with the Iraqi Kurd military, the Peshmerga in northen Iraq, when we were attacked by ISIS with chlorine and mustard gas, I know from personal experience how physically and psychological ky destabilising and demoralising a gas attack can be.
In my opinion, President Assad is still in power because he used gas against his people. Without it he would have been disposed, of that I'm sure.
After the four years of conventional attack on Aleppo, the second city in Syria, the siege was eventually broken by 17 days of chlorine barrel bomb attacks.
Putin watching on, saw how effective this type of warfare could be, and is now replicating it in Ukraine.
He attacked my hometown, Salisbury, with the most toxic chemical weapon man has made, on 4 March 2018.
And he too is still in power.
The use of chemical weapons is a war crime and Assad and Putin should be tried by the International Criminal Court and face their rightful justice.
But with a United Nations that is a the thinnest of paper tigers, whose leader seems to be at the beck and call of Putin as he scuttles off to the BRICS Summit in Russia this week [a summit of emerging economies, including China and Iran] and timid Western leaders, this seems a long way from possible.
The West seems oblivious to the fact that tyrants and dictators will keep doing more horrific things if it suits their aims, and more importantly if the UN et al let them.
So no surprise to me at least that Putin is using chemical weapons again in Ukraine.
In my experience, chemical weapons are morbidly brilliant and if you have no morals or scruples you would use them all the time.
And Assad and Putin have neither - in spades!
The West is fixated by Putin's nuclear weapons, whose threat he has used to bully many timid Western leaders into inaction.
If only Sir Keir Starmer allowed Ukraine to use the British Storm Shadow missiles to strike into Russia, they alone could nullify the Russian tactical nuclear threat.
As it is, President Zelensky is now talking about Ukraine regrowing its nuclear capability, which would only add to the spectre of nuclear proliferation globally.
With the inertia caused by the US elections and a manifestly inexperienced new team running Britain, Putin's evil intent is allowed to blossom virtually unchallenged.
We may well rue the time we held back weaponry, and that we did send was anchored by ridiculous constraints, if we have to once again fight a tyrant heading west again in the near future.
One wonders who on earth is advising our politicians today on all matters military, who appear so easily hoodwinked by the tyrant in the Kremlin's army manoeuvres?
The special advisers appear to know rather more about politics and spin, and rather less about military and security strategy.
Not a great place to be when we are on the edge of war with Russia today.
And most especially in the nuclear and chemical world, where any misjudgement, misunderstanding or accident could lead to Armageddon.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former Colonel and Commanding Officer of the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Regiment, said in his most recent opinion piece for BFBS Forces News it is chemical WMDs that the West must focus on stopping, not the nuclear weapons Moscow 'constantly' use as a threat.
Join Our Newsletter
