The United States accused the Russian Federation of using chloropicrin in the war against Ukraine

The United States has accused Russia of using chemical weapons in the war against Ukraine. About it it says in the official statement of the US State Department on the introduction of new sanctions against Russia. The sanctions were introduced, the report said, in order to increase the burden on Russia associated with its external aggression and internal repression.

More than 200 individuals and companies are included in the sanctions list by the Ministry of Finance. The State Department imposed sanctions against about 80 more companies and individuals directly, including in connection with Russia’s alleged violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

According to the report, the State Department concluded that Russia used the chemical agent chloropicrin against the Ukrainian military. This substance is included in the black list of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Chloropicrin is not a nerve agent – the most dangerous – toxic substance, but has an irritating and, in high concentrations, a suffocating effect. It was used in particular in the First World War. The State Department report also notes that Russian troops are using irritant substances similar in quality to those typically used by police to disperse demonstrations in Ukraine. This, as the American department notes, is not about individual cases, but about targeted tactics to achieve tactical success on the battlefield. It is noted that Russia continues to violate the OPCW convention, as in the case of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Alexei Navalny with the Novichok nerve agent.

The Ukrainian military previously announced the use of chemicals on the battlefield by Russian troops. There were no reports of casualties as a result of their use, nor whether it brought any success to Russian troops.

Moscow has not yet responded to the US allegations.

The State Department’s sanctions list includes the radiological, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian Ministry of Defense, as well as NIIPA (Research Institute of Applied Acoustics) and the 48th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense. All of them are allegedly related to the development of chemical and biological weapons.

The State Department also imposed sanctions against a number of companies related to the Novatek Arctic LNG-2 project, against nine ships, a number of coal mining enterprises included in the Sibanthracite group, against companies associated with Rosatom, and a number of military-industrial complex enterprises and their leaders, as well as three employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service related to the detention of oppositionist Alexei Navalny, who died in a colony.