White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday called out Russian claims that the United States has secretly operated chemical and biological weapons laboratories on Ukrainian territory as a disinformation campaign meant to gloss over Russia’s recent history of using banned chemical weapons.

       Over the past several days, Russian officials have suggested the US has been operating such facilities on Ukrainian soil. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed on Wednesday to possess what she described seized Ukrainian documents which purported to showed "an emergency attempt to erase evidence of military biological programmes".

       Ukraine latest – live updates

       Russian media and right-wing media outlets which frequently promote Russian talking points have also mischaracterised testimony given to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday by Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland regarding “biological research facilities” in Ukraine.

       In a series of posts to her official Twitter on Wednesday, Ms Psaki pointed out that Russia “has a track record” of making false accusations against the West that are meant to disguise unlawful actions taken by their own agents.

       “Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” she wrote.

       Recommended Psaki labels Russian attack on children’s hospital ‘barbaric’ White House claims Biden’s sanctions have ‘basically crushed’ Russian economy Ukraine publishes list of 50 global brands that are continuing to operate in Russia

       Asked about the comments at her daily press briefing on Thursday, Ms Psaki said Moscow “has a history also of inventing outright lies” such as “the suggestion that the United States has a chemical and biological weapons program or Ukraine does”.

       “Russia is the country that has a chemical and biological weapons programme,” she said, adding that the objective of her prior comments “was to make clear the inaccuracy of the information, the misinformation they're trying to put out and make clear to the world that they not only have the capacity, they have a history of using chemical and biological weapons.”

       “In this moment, we should have our eyes open for that possibility,” she said.