Countering CBW Disinformation

Russian forces pushing their grinding offensive in eastern Ukraine "appear to be" resorting to World War I-era chemical weapons in their bid to dislodge Kyiv's defending units, according to the latest battlefield update from the Institute for the Study of War.

Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun, the spokesperson for the Tavria Ukrainian military group operating on the southeastern front line, said on Tuesday that Russian forces had been using "K-51 grenades with chloropicrin" in their attacks on Kyiv's positions.

Russia is actively using chemical weapons against the Ukrainian military, according to Captain Andrii Rudyk, a representative of the Center for Research of Trophy and Advanced Weapons and Military Equipment of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Tuesday that it thwarted a terrorist attack with the use of an analogue of the BZ chemical warfare agent in the Zaporozhye region, adding that three citizens of Ukraine were detained.

Russia's state Investigative Committee said on Monday it was examining the alleged use of chemical weapons by Ukrainian forces near the eastern Ukrainian towns of Soledar and Bakhmut.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/without-supplying-evidence-russia-…

February 7, 2023

In May 2024, the United States imposed new sanctions on three Russian government entities and four Russian companies in response to its full-scale war and use of chemical weapons against Ukraine.

Over the past decade, Russia has stepped up its disinformation campaigns to erode trust in arms control across the nuclear, chemical, and biological domains. The new era of rapidly disseminated disinformation poses significant challenges to U.S. national security and, more specifically, to arms control verification and compliance. In this polluted information environment, offense is king.

Regulating the development of artificial intelligence is possible—and necessary. Tristan Paci

Abstract: For the past five years, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been the target of a concerted disinformation campaign. CBRN Perspectives & Analytics looks back on how an institution so central to global counterproliferation came under attack.

Information is the world’s lifeblood. It pulsates in torrents of facts and images. We are swamped with it.

But information can be poison, a dangerous weapon. Disinformation, or organized lying, can be used to wage political warfare. As the historian Thomas Rid wrote in “Active Measures,” his book on the subject, disinformation can weaken a political system that places its trust in truth. “Disinformation operations, in essence, erode the very foundations of open societies,” he wrote.

The growing trend of disinformation operations is weakening the trust in international community general and multilateral institutions in particular. The policy of biological weapons disinformation is being pursued by all the major powers, and quite interestingly, the victim of it is also from all the major global political groupings. The same is true about the Chemical Weapons Convention. As State-backed disinformation wars have become a central facet of global geopolitics, its disorderly impact on the international security environment and future challenges are yet to be decoded.