The United States has accused Russia of violating the global ban on chemical weapons by using the asphyxiant chloropicrin against Ukrainian soldiers and using counterinsurgency agents “as a method of warfare” in Ukraine.
“The use of such chemicals is not an isolated incident and is likely due to the desire of the Russian armed forces to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and gain tactical advantages on the battlefield,” the State Department said in a statement on Wednesday, which also included new things Sanctions were announced against companies linked to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
According to the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, chloropicrin, a nearly colorless oily liquid that causes severe irritation to the eyes, skin and lungs, was used in large quantities during World War I.
While it continues to be used as an agricultural pesticide, its use in war is banned by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
Russia has said it no longer has a military chemical arsenal, but the country is under pressure to demand more transparency over its alleged use of toxic chemicals.
In addition to chloropicrin, Russian forces have also used shells loaded with CS and CN gases, Reuters news agency reported earlier this month, citing the Ukrainian military.
It added that at least 500 Ukrainian soldiers had been treated for exposure to toxic substances and one had suffocated from tear gas.
Gyundoz Mamedov, deputy prosecutor general in Ukraine until 2021, posted on social media on April 24 that the Russian army had used tear gas against Ukrainian forces at least 900 times in the past six months, with more than 1,400 incidents since the start of its full-time campaign Invasion in February 2022.
While civilians can usually escape such gases during protests, soldiers trapped in trenches without gas masks are forced to either flee enemy fire or suffocate.
The State Department said Moscow’s use of chloropicrin and “continued disregard” of the CWC “arises from the same plan as its operations to poison Aleksei Navalny and Sergei and Yulia Skripal with the nerve agent Novichok.”
Navalny, who died suddenly in an Arctic prison colony in February, was poisoned with Novichok in 2020.
Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence agent who was granted asylum in the United Kingdom, survived an assassination attempt in 2018 that also nearly killed his daughter. A British police officer investigating the case also became seriously ill, while Dawn Sturgess, a woman who was accidentally given the discarded bottle of the poison, died four months later after spraying herself with the liquid, believing it it is a perfume.
The British government concluded that the Russian state was “almost certainly” behind the attack.
Moscow denied involvement in the poisonings of Skripal and Navalny.
The US statement said it imposed sanctions on three Russian state entities linked to Moscow’s chemical and biological weapons programs, including a specialized military unit that enabled the use of chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops.
Four Russian companies supporting the three companies were also sanctioned, it said.
The sanctions freeze all US assets of the affected companies and generally prohibit Americans from doing business with them.
Separately, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on three companies and two individuals involved in purchasing items for Russian military institutions involved in the country’s chemical and biological weapons programs.
The sanctions were among a series of new measures against Russia as part of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The CWC prohibits the production and use of chemical weapons. In addition, the 193 countries that have ratified the convention, including Russia and the United States, are required to destroy all stocks of banned chemicals.
Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of breaching the treaty at meetings of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
In 2022, the organization expressed concern about reports that Russia had used chemical weapons in its attack on the port of Mariupol, but said it had not been formally asked to open an investigation into the use of banned substances in Ukraine.