White House has team in place to respond to potential chemical weapons use by Russia

The White House has a team set up for contingency planning on a variety of scenarios during the war in Ukraine, including Russia’s potential use of chemical or biological weapons, a senior administration official said.

A so-called Tiger Team is in place to prepare the White House’s response for the next three months of Russia’s invasion, while a strategy group is in place to do longer-term examination of “major geo-political shifts that are occurring as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the official said.

The top scenario the teams are working on is Russia using chemical or biological weapons. The strategy group is working to monitor and mitigate risks, while considering how to advance and defend U.S. interests. 

“We are working to continue to ensure that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a strategic failure,” the official said.

The other scenarios the team is planning for is the targeting of U.S. security convoys, disruptions to global food supply chains, and continued response to the growing refugee crisis. 

The National Security Council (NSC) sent a memo to agencies on Feb. 28 to establish the two processes, which included continuing the Tiger Team and creating the strategy group to work alongside it.

The president, before leaving for Brussels on Wednesday, said the possible use of chemical weapons by Russia was a “real threat.” He has also said that such an attack would incur a “severe price.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday that there’s concern that Russia could use chemical weapons because of the “rhetoric” out of the Kremlin, and because Russia is trying to create a pretext accusing Ukraine and NATO allies of preparing to use chemical weapons.

“Any use of chemical weapons will totally change the nature of the conflict, it will be in latent violation of international law and it will have widespread consequences and of course be extremely dangerous,” he said.