Russia ‘carrying out chemical attacks’ against Ukraine troops
Telegraph investigation reveals soldiers on the front line are routinely shelled with gas grenades
RUSSIAN troops are carrying out a systematic campaign of illegal chemical attacks against Ukrainian soldiers, according to a Telegraph investigation.
The Telegraph spoke to a number of Ukrainian soldiers on the front line who detailed how their positions have been coming under near daily attacks from small drones dropping mainly tear gas but also other chemicals.
The use of such gas, known as CS and commonly used by riot police, is banned during wartime under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Ihor*, the commander of a Ukrainian reconnaissance team who is deployed near the front line city of Chasiv Yar, in the Donetsk Oblast, told The Telegraph: “Nearly every position in our area of the front was getting one or two gas grenades dropped on them a day.
“The only way for them to successfully attack us was with gas.”
Even when not lethal or immediately incapacitating, these gas attacks usually cause panic.
“Their first instinct is to get out,” Ihor said. They can then be attacked with more conventional weapons.
Two other Ukrainian soldiers, fighting at opposite ends of the front line, spoke of similar experiences.
Mikhail*, the commander of a unit in Robotnye in Zaporizhzhia, where a Russian offensive is under way, said: “Gas masks saved more than one of our lives.”
He said his soldiers are now required to carry masks with them at all times.
Slava*, a senior lieutenant whose unit is near Lyman in Donetsk, said some Ukrainian units in the area were coming under “almost daily” gas attacks.
One of these CS gas grenades was handed to The Telegraph for verification by Rebekah Maciorowski, an American combat medic and a qualified nurse serving in the Ukrainian army.
She has been routinely called to provide medical aid to Ukrainian soldiers in the three brigades she works with in Donetsk after chemical weapon attacks, which she described as “systematic”.
The grenade was recovered by soldiers in the 53rd Mechanised Brigade. “My guys retrieved it whilst under fire because nobody believed they were being attacked with chemical weapons,” she said.
Marc-Michael Blum, a chemical weapons expert and ex-head of the OPCW laboratory, confirmed the recovered munition was a K-51 gas grenade, which are typically filled with tear gas.
Ms Maciorowski said she attended one incident in 2023 caused by what she suspects was hydrogen cyanide, a deadly gas used in the First World War.
A Russian drone dropped two munitions containing an unknown gas that had a “crushed almond aroma” on soldiers in Donetsk, she said.
Two people were killed and 12 were hospitalised. Yuriy Belousov, the head of investigations for Ukraine’s prosecutor general, referred to one of the deaths as being caused by an “unknown gas” in an interview with Le Monde in January.
Officially the Ukrainian military has claimed a total of 626 gas attacks have been carried out by Russian forces since the start of the full-scale invasion.
Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday that Ukraine could run out of air defence missiles if Russia keeps up its intense long-range bombing campaign.
The Ukrainian leader’s warning follows weeks of Russian strikes on the energy system, towns and cities using a broad arsenal of missiles and drones.
“If they keep hitting (Ukraine) every day the way they have for the last month, we might run out of missiles, and the partners know it,” he said in an interview aired on Ukrainian television. * Soldiers’ names have been changed to protect their identity