Shadowy UK intelligence figure Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was at the forefront of chemical weapons deceptions in Syria.  Now in Ukraine, he’s up to his old tricks again, tweeted Alex Rubinstein.

With Washington and its NATO allies forced to watch from the side lines as Russia’s military advances across Eastern Ukraine and encircles Kiev, US and British officials have resorted to a troubling tactic that could trigger a massive escalation, wrote The Gray Zone a week ago.

Following similar claims by his Secretary of State and ambassador to the United Nations, US President Joe Biden has declared that Russia will pay a “severe price” if it uses chemical weapons in Ukraine.

President Biden says NATO will respond in kind if there are chemical attacks in Ukraine – my view @BBCRadio4 The World Tonight 17-23 minshttps://t.co/l5Kw0D8zCp

— Hamish DBG (@HamishDBG) March 25, 2022

The warnings emanating from the Biden administration contain chilling echoes of those issued by the administration of President Barack Obama throughout the US-led dirty war on Syria.  In each major chemical weapons event, signs of staging and deception by the armed Syrian opposition were present. 

De Bretton-Gordon played a pivotal role in promoting and extending the war on Syria through the management of information surrounding chemical weapons incidents.  Who is de Bretton-Gordon, and does his sudden reappearance as an expert voice on the Russia-Ukraine war signal a return to the dangerous US-UK red line policy?

Is British Intelligence Operating in Ukraine?

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a British army veteran identified by UK media as a “former spy.”  His Twitter profile once identified him as a member of 77^th Brigade, the British Army’s official psychological warfare division.  He is now a self-proclaimed “chemical warrior.”

Since 2013 and throughout the Syrian conflict de Bretton-Gordon was intimately involved in numerous chemical weapons deceptions that sustained the war and ratcheted up pressure for Western military intervention.

Both, and at the same time, MI6 and de Bretton-Gordon were gathering on-the-ground evidence of chemical attacks, for example soil samples, strongly suggesting his linkage to the UK intelligence agency. The purpose of the soil-sample gathering exercise was to push the US into intervening by proving government culpability for alleged chemical weapons attacks.

Throughout the dirty war on Syria, de Bretton-Gordon routinely cropped up in the media attributing gas attacks and war crimes to Syrian and Russian forces, and fear-mongered about their implications for future conflicts with the West.  A role de Bretton-Gordon has enthusiastically resumed throughout the war in Ukraine, hyping the threat to Western countries.  He has resurfaced at the center of the aggressive push for escalation with a nuclear armed Russia. If his role in Syria is any guide, a series of cynical deceptions could be on the way.

Ever since the conflict began, Kiev (or Kyiv) has exhibited an endless enthusiasm for lying, having distorted or even outright concocted events and facts whole-cloth to advance its objectives on countless occasions.

The most dangerous claims advanced by Ukrainian propagandists have been reinforced by the supposed authority of de Bretton-Gordon who has argued that Russian chemical strikes were absolutely inevitable and based his prediction on his opinion that Moscow “has no morals or scruples.”

Read more: British intelligence operative’s involvement in Ukraine crisis signals false flag attacks ahead, The Gray Zone, 24 March 2022

On 24 February 2022, just moments after Russia’s military entered Ukraine, de Bretton-Gordon surfaced in British media to claim that Russia was preparing a chemical attack on Ukrainian civilians.

In a typical media appearance, on 10 March, de Bretton Gordon told London’s LBC radio show that “nothing is off the table at this stage.” Among the horrors he forecast was the use of white phosphorous “to set towns and cities on fire.”

On 22 March, he demanded that Ukrainians be provided with a guide he wrote called, “How to Survive a Chemical Attack.”

How to Survive a Chemical or Biological Attack – this is Free – please disseminate as widely as possible to civilians in #Ukraine & surrounding countries https://t.co/tkV4Nb3PaO

— Hamish DBG (@HamishDBG) March 22, 2022

In the morning of 24 March, de Bretton-Gordon retweeted a video clip from Ukraine posted by an ITV editor with the comment: “Right out of the Syrian playbook – scorched earth policy to burn towns & cities to the ground – White Phosphorus used in this manner is a War Crime.” 

Later the same day, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told a NATO summit that Russia had used white phosphorus against civilians in his country.  The following day there was a flurry of reports in corporate media about white phosphorous and accusations against Russia based simply on Zelensky’s word, without waiting for an investigation or independent confirmation.  THIS article by CBS News is one such example.

The video de Bretton-Gordon retweeted had been shared on the evening of 23 March by ITV global security editor, Rohit Kachroo, which claimed that Russia targeted suburbs of Kyiv with white phosphorus on 22 March.

On 24 March, Kacheroo’s report was published by ITV claiming: “Russian forces have been dropping what some experts believe could be white phosphorous bombs … analysts came to the conclusion following allegations from Ukrainian officials and footage from ITV News of white showers lighting up Irpin’s night sky.” But Kacheroo provided no details of how many or who the experts or analysts were that came to these conclusions.

Sara Belmont wasted no time and responded to Kachroo’s tweet: “Hi there – I work with NewsNation in Chicago. We’re wondering if we can get permission to use this video on air and online tonight, please? Thank you.”

While we, ourselves, cannot begin to claim what Kacheroo’s video depicts, several twitter users – notably not de Bretton-Gordon – questioned and refuted that ITV’s video showed the use of white phosphorous.  Zain al-Abiden, who describes himself as a journalist from Syria, responded to Kachroo: “This is not phosphorous. We, as Syrians, can easily distinguish phosphorous, the Russians have already used phosphorous extensively in Syria.” 

And Mathew Clark tweeted at the ITV editor: “That’s not phosphorus.  That’s magnesium and thermite from an incendiary Grad rocket.”

Interestingly, within a couple of days, the reports and accusations by corporate media relating to the use of white phosphorous in Ukraine vanished as quickly as they had emerged.

Looping back to de Bretton-Gordon’s appearance on LBC Radio two weeks before Kachroo’s tweet – where among the horrors he forecast was the use of white phosphorous – de Bretton-Gordon forcefully asserted, “the only way to take a large city or town ultimately is to use chemical weapons.” He pointed to Syria to prove his point – but without referencing his own pivotal role in escalating that conflict through the manipulation of evidence and scientifically bereft fear-mongering in the media.

From Syria to Ukraine, is it happening again?