Putin warned of “increased response” if Russia uses chemical weapons in Ukraine

Russia has been warned of an “increased response” from the West if it uses chemical weapons in Ukraine. “I would say to anybody in Russia thinking about this: do not cross that line, do not inflict any more misery and suffering on the Ukrainian people,” minister for technology Chris Philp told Times Radio today. He added that he would not “speculate” on the form an increased response would take, but insisted the use of chemical weapons is a “line that Russian governments should not cross”. Boris Johnson yesterday raised concerns that Vladimir Putin’s regime might use chemical weapons and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the world should be “on the lookout” for the use of chemical and biological weapons.

The comments come after Moscow triggered a United Nations security council emergency meeting to discuss what Putin’s regime described as “the military biological activities of the US on the territory of Ukraine”. Kyiv and Washington have dismissed the allegation and warned that Russia could instead be preparing the ground for a “false flag” attack before using its own chemical weapons. Nick Thomas-Symonds labelled the accusation against the US as “ludicrous”. Labour’s Shadow International Trade Secretary told Sky News this morning that if Russia did use chemical weapons, economic sanctions would need to be “tightened”.

Labour’s Jess Phillips read out the names of women killed by men during the last year in parliament’s International Women’s Day debate yesterday. She does so every year, and yesterday’s list was longer than the last. “The list is painfully long, but in reality the list is much longer. We can make it shorter. Let’s act faster,” the shadow minister told colleagues. Many women “don’t appear on our lists because no-one is ever charged with their killing, or because they die by staged homocide and sudden death, falling from a building, overdose or suicide, and we never look into the history of domestic abuse in their cases”, Phillips explained.

Also on LabourList, local Labour councillor Kate Ewert explains how the housing crisis is affecting residents in Cornwall and stresses the need to “change the system at its core” instead of “tinkering around the edges”. Anneliese Dodds has defended her recent comments on the definition of a woman during an International Woman’s Day debate after receiving criticism from Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin. And Labour has urged the government to bring in the armed forces to speed up the processing of Ukrainian visas.