MOSCOW, July 8 ./TASS/. The West’s provocations are getting increasingly sophisticated, its plans to accuse Russia of using chemical weapons in Ukraine are caused by the worsening situation in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS.

Earlier, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian Armed Forces’ Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) Protection Troops, said that the West and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were preparing to accuse Russia of using chemical weapons in Ukraine. "The worse things get for the Kiev regime, the more sophisticated the provocations are," the diplomat said when asked to comment on the situation.

Kirillov said that the US and Germany together with Ukraine are planning to initiate the launch of a special fact-finding mission to discredit Russia. "One of the so-called independent states is supposed to initiate an investigation and fabricate evidence that Russia used toxic chemicals during its special military operation," he told a briefing on Ukraine’s violations of its commitments under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

According to Kirillov, the United States has already allocated $400,000 for that. At the same time, the OPCW has been instructed by its Western sponsors not to react to Russia’s statements on the CWC violation by Ukraine.

He noted that the United States and the United Kingdom are taking a similar approach within the mechanisms to review and assess scientific and technological developments and on international cooperation and assistance they are promoting under the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) to be able to shape expert opinion about biosecurity threats in their own interests. For these ends, they want to create channels of influence on international political and research structures by means of issuing grants.

The Russian defense ministry will continue efforts to expose Ukraine’s breaching its commitments under the convention, Kirillov pledged.