TEHRAN - A geopolitical analyst says that Moscow has no military or strategic interest in targeting Kyiv with chemical or biological weapons.

“To the question of which side might employ WMDs, it’s extremely unlikely that Russia would ever do this, simply because it has no military-strategic reason to,” Andrew Korybko tells the Tehran Times.
 “Kyiv, however, has every such reason to attempt this out of desperation to increase U.S.-led Western pressure on Russia and further discredit it in the eyes of its targeted audience,” Korybko adds.
 He believes that such false flag provocation by Ukraine to blame Russia for possible use of WMDs could be exploited “to push for direct NATO intervention such as the dispatch of a Polish-led so-called ‘peacekeeping force’.”
Following is the text of the interview:

Q: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of committing “genocide” in Bucha. What is your comment?
 
A: The Bucha incident must be investigated by an independent and multilateral group of experts in order to comprehensively address the Russian Defense Ministry’s concerns about the footage that’s spread across the internet over the weekend. They correctly noted how their forces departed on 30 March, the day after which the town’s mayor made a video address where he didn’t mention these alleged crimes. Footage shot by pro-Kyiv forces of their troops patrolling the town immediately after the Russian departure also didn’t show any dead bodies either.
 The Russian Defense Ministry asked why supposed evidence of these crimes didn’t emerge until after Ukrainian intelligence agents and the media entered the town several days later. They also raised the question of why the cadavers didn’t show the physical signs typically associated with those that have allegedly been left out in the elements for at least half a week according to Kyiv’s official narrative. Another point is that the bodies had white armbands around them of the sort usually worn by Russians and civilians in the areas under the control of that country’s armed forces.
 
Kyiv has a history of unsuccessful psy-ops in this conflict since its onset over a month ago. These include the so-called “Ghost of Kyiv”, the Snake Island incident, and the Mariupol maternity and children’s hospital bombing, among others. Its claims cannot be taken for granted as fact after prior high-profile ones have already been debunked. The swiftness with which the U.S.-led West is moving to apply additional pressure upon Moscow on the pretext of automatically assuming that it committed war crimes without having even conducted an investigation suggests that they’re exploiting the incident.
 
One alternative interpretation of what happened is that Kyiv dropped the dead bodies of its fellow citizens into Bucha who were earlier executed by neo-Nazi militias on the basis of supposedly being Russian sympathizers in order to stage a false flag war crime for pressuring its U.S.-led Western partners to urgently dispatch more military and other forms of aid. This possibility can’t be dismissed until an independent and multilateral investigation carried out by credible experts is undertaken and completed. Without doing so, Kyiv’s claims will always remain questionable.
 
Q: Washington warns about using chemical weapons by Russia, while the Americans have admitted U.S.-Ukraine collaboration to develop bio laboratories in Ukraine’s territory. Do you predict any side to resort to biological weapons in this war?
 
A: Nobody can accurately predict the precise course of any conflict, especially regarding a game-changing event such as the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). From what’s been revealed thus far by the Russian ministries of defense and foreign affairs, Kyiv was indeed conspiring with its U.S.-led Western patrons to develop biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Moscow has publicly shared this evidence for the international community to review but its geopolitical opponents dismiss it all out of hand as so-called “Russian propaganda”.
To the question of which side might employ WMDs, it’s extremely unlikely that Russia would ever do this, simply because it has no military-strategic reason to. Kyiv, however, has every such reason to attempt this out of desperation to increase U.S.-led Western pressure on Russia and further discredit it in the eyes of its targeted audience. Any such false flag provocation by Kyiv that tries to blame Moscow for the use of WMDs in the current conflict could also be exploited to push for direct NATO intervention such as the dispatch of a Polish-led so-called “peacekeeping force”.
 
Nevertheless, nobody can confidently predict whether that scenario will indeed come to pass. It’s better to discuss possibilities and the reasons behind why they might unfold than to say with certainty that something will or will not happen. That’s because if whatever it is that they’re predicting doesn’t happen, their opponents might misportray the person who warned about that as having spread so-called “fake news”. Folks can inadvertently discredit themselves and their media partners by saying that something dramatic will definitely happen but then it never ends up occurring.
 
Q: How do you see Russia’s partial withdrawal from Ukraine? Is it true or just fake news?

 A: It’s not fake news because the Russian Defense Ministry itself openly declared that the ongoing special operation is transitioning to its second phase of focusing on the liberation of the newly recognized Donbass Republics. Furthermore, Moscow said that its military drawdown from parts of Ukraine is intended to be interpreted as a goodwill gesture for encouraging further progress on peace talks.

 This development suggests that it was never Russia’s intention to capture the Ukrainian capital but that making a move on that city was meant to distract its opponents from its true military goals in the eastern and southern portions of that former Soviet Republic.
 
In fact, the Russian Defense Ministry actually alluded to exactly that. They revealed that their opponent’s military capabilities have been devastated over the past month so it’s now easier to liberate Donbass with fewer civilian casualties and collateral damage.
 
Q: How do you evaluate Zelensky’s performance in the media war? Every day he appears on TV channels to give an image of the war. Don’t you think he is successful in his performance?
 
A: There was never any credible chance that Russia was going to win any so-called “media war” in the eyes of the U.S.-led Western audience. Nobody should ever have had such a false expectation due to America’s dominance of the mainstream media and well as its allies’ censorship of publicly financed Russian international media and some independent Russian-friendly sites.

That being the case, the dynamics are altogether different when it comes to the non-Western audience. Many sympathize with Russia, even if only because they regard it as an obstacle to the U.S. efforts to reassert its declining unipolar hegemony. The vast majority of the international community also hasn’t sanctioned Russia despite immense U.S.-led Western pressure to do so.

Their populations support these governments’ policy of principled neutrality that’s being practiced to strengthen their strategic autonomy. India is a perfect example of this. Despite having grown very close to the U.S. over the past decade, it’s remained loyal to its special and privileged strategic partners in Russia. New Delhi is setting a powerful example for the rest of the developing world.

Q: What are the economic fallouts of the Ukraine war, especially after sanctioning Russia and possible problems in supplying energy at the global level?
 
A: The Russian economy has impressively managed to survive the initial shock of the U.S.-led West’s unprecedented and preplanned sanctions. This is due to the currency controls that were put into place as well as the fact that the country is largely self-sufficient in terms of basic goods and services, especially agricultural products and energy. Europe, however, isn’t self-sufficient in the latter two and thus risks a major economic crisis if it submits to U.S. pressure to completely “decouple” from Russia.
 
President Putin’s decree late last month ordering that gas be paid in rubles gave a major boost to his country’s currency. It’s since recovered to its pre-crisis level while Europe is now mired in uncertainty about what might come next. The U.S. has a strategic interest in provoking an economic crisis in the EU so as to reduce the strength of the dollar’s euro rival, create problems for its companies’ competitors there, and potentially even buy some of them out on the cheap if they become desperate enough.