Chemical weapons use in Syria worries Ukraine

BEIRUT >> The chilling scenes from Syria of victims twitching and gasping for air after chlorine cylinders were dropped from helicopters in towns and villages were broadcast over and over in the course of the country's civil war.

Legal and moral taboos were shattered. Hundreds were killed, including many children, in dozens of poison gas attacks widely blamed on President Bashar Assad's forces under the protection of his chief ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Several years later, concerns are growing that such weapons could be used in Ukraine, where Russian forces have been waging a devastating war for weeks.

Western officials and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have warned that Putin could deploy chemical agents.

Officials say they are investigating an unconfirmed claim by a far-right Ukrainian regiment that a poisonous substance was dropped in the besieged city of Mariupol this week. The claim could not be confirmed by independent sources, and Ukrainian officials say it could have been phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons.

Putin has threatened to broaden the Ukraine war into a nuclear conflict, but it is unclear if chemical agents will be used to support his military operations. Analysts say the Syria war set a horrific precedent in terms of deploying chlorine, sulfur and the nerve agent sarin, completely disregarding international norms and with no accountability.

“From what we're seeing now, it seems that Russia has drawn the conclusion that it's safe to continue this modus operandi from Syria in the Ukrainian context as well,” said Aida Samani, legal adviser with Civil Rights Defenders, a Sweden-based group.

“Of course, that undermines the international regulations that we have in place and lowers the threshold for the use of such weapons,” Samani added.

She has joined with other nongovernmental organizations to file a criminal complaint on behalf of a group of Syrians living in Sweden against the Syrian government for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to its use of chemical weapons.

Western officials say Russia may be looking to borrow from the Syria playbook, where Assad's forces tested the international community's resolve by gradually ramping up the brutality of attacks and methods.

Part of the equation in Syria was the difficulty of proving anything in the aftermath of such attacks, largely due to the lack of immediate access. Assad, with Russia's backing, consistently cast a cloud of confusion, accusing the opposition of fabricating evidence or deploying poison gas themselves to try to frame him.

An investigative mechanism set up by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons blamed Syrian government forces for multiple chemical attacks in Syria, including the use of chlorine and sarin in an attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017 that killed about 100 people. At least one mustard gas attack was blamed on the Islamic State group, which held territory in Syria and Iraq for several years during the war that killed half a million people.