Ex-British spy Christopher Steele fears Ukraine will face rising aggression from Russia

Former MI6 agent, who created the Trump dossier, says Russia may use chemical weapons

Former UK intelligence officer Christopher Steele believes Russia could soon use chemical weapons in Ukraine. AFP

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Former MI6 spy Christopher Steele believes Ukraine will face even more brutality in the coming weeks and says Russia's use of chemical weapons cannot be ruled out.

Mr Steele, who created the Trump dossier, says Russia's President Vladimir Putin has made "gross miscalculations" and "overreached" in his invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Steele, who worked for MI6 for more than two decades and ran the Russia desk for the intelligence service, said the slow progress of Russian troops could lead to Mr Putin ordering more "indiscriminate killing".

A number of attempts to defeat Ukrainian defences, including on the outskirts of Kyiv, failed on Thursday.

"I think as the Russian Army becomes bogged down, clearly not realising its objectives militarily, you are likely to see more indiscriminate killing and bombardment and possibly the use of chemical weapons," he said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also said he feared Mr Putin may opt for chemical warfare.

"The stuff that you are hearing about chemical weapons, this is straight out of their playbook," he said of the Russians.

"They start saying that there are chemical weapons that have been stored by their opponents or by the Americans and so when they themselves deploy chemical weapons, as I fear they may, they have a sort of maskirovka, a fake story, ready to go.

"And you have seen it in Syria. You saw it even in the UK," he said, in an apparent reference to the 2018 poisoning in Salisbury.

Mr Steele said he believes the invasion is beyond Russia.

"I think we’ve gone over a watershed here. An operation on this scale is really beyond Russia," he said.

"I think there are several gross miscalculations here by Putin.

"As people's living standards start to fall, there will be increased protests on the streets of Moscow, Saint Petersburg and other cities."

Russia claims its offensive is aimed at disarming its neighbour and dislodging leaders it calls neo-Nazis. Kyiv and its Western allies say this is a baseless pretext to invade a democratic country of 44 million people.

Mr Steele was behind a report called the Steele Dossier, which made a number of explosive claims linking former US president Donald Trump to the Kremlin during the 2016 election, such as the accusation that Russia had compromising material on him.

Mr Steele was hired to conduct the research through a law company on behalf of Mr Trump's political opponents, including Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate in the US election in 2016.