Washington:
The United States on Wednesday accused Russia of violating an international ban on chemical weapons by deploying the suffocating agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops and using riot control agents “as a method of warfare” in Ukraine.
“The use of such chemicals is not an isolated incident and is likely motivated by the desire of Russian forces to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical gains on the battlefield,” the State Department said in a statement.
Chloropicrin is listed as a banned suffocating agent by the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was created to implement and monitor compliance with the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
German forces fired gas at Allied troops during World War I, in one of the first uses of a chemical weapon.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the Ukrainian military said Russia had stepped up its illegal use of riot control agents as it presses its biggest advances in eastern Ukraine in more than two years.
In addition to chloropicrin, Russian forces used grenades loaded with CS and CN gases, the Ukrainian military claims.
While civilians are usually able to escape riot control gases during protests, soldiers trapped in the trenches without gas masks must flee under enemy fire or risk suffocating.
The State Department announced that it would deliver to Congress its determination that Russia’s use of chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops violated the CWC.
Moscow’s use of the gas “comes from the same playbook as its operations to poison” the late opposition leader Alexi Navalny in 2020 and Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in 2018 with the nerve agent Novichok, the statement said.
Russia has denied involvement in both cases.
The department also determined that Russia violated the CWC’s prohibition on the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare, the statement said.
It said it was sanctioning three Russian state entities linked to Moscow’s chemical and biological weapons programs, including a specialized military unit that “facilitated the use” of chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops.
Four Russian companies supporting the three entities were also sanctioned, he said.
Separately, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on three entities and two individuals involved in purchasing items for Russian military institutes involved in the country’s chemical and biological weapons programs.
The sanctions were among new measures announced by the United States on Wednesday against Russia during its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The CWC prohibits the production and use of chemical weapons. It also requires the 193 countries that have ratified the convention, which include Russia and the United States, to destroy any stocks of banned chemicals.
The State Department was expected to convey to the OPCW its determination that Russia violated the CAQ.
Russia and Ukraine accused each other of violating the treaty at OPCW meetings. But the organization says it has not been formally requested to open an investigation into the use of banned substances in Ukraine.
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