Russian forces have increased their use of banned gas weapons in Ukraine as they push to seize full control of four occupied regions before a possible ceasefire deal, according to Kyiv’s military.
Although using chemical agents to cause toxic harm in war is prohibited by international treaties, President Putin’s troops used tear gas, chloropicrin — a choking agent — and other “unidentified chemicals” a total of 767 times last month, 844 times in February and 740 times in January.
That compares with 166 times in November, when
President Trump was elected on pledges to end the war, the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Department of Ukraine’s armed forces (RCBZ) said.
The Times also spoke to soldiers and doctors who claimed to have witnessed the deaths of Ukrainian servicemen as a result of
attacks by chemical weapons, as well as pathologists who recorded the deaths of soldiers who were allegedly gassed. The witnesses suggested the Russians were increasingly resorting to chemical weapons to flush out Ukrainians from defensive strongholds or to immobilise and leave them vulnerable to conventional attacks.
The US State Department and war monitors have previously accused Moscow of using CN and CS gases — also known as tear gas — to
deadly effect in Ukraine. It also said that Russia had used chloropicrin, which is severely irritating to the lungs and eyes, to dislodge Ukrainian troops from fortified positions.
Although classified as “riot-control agents”, tear gases are banned from the battlefield under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the 1925 Geneva Protocol because they can cause
great harm to soldiers deployed in trenches or enclosed locations. Chloropicrin, a pesticide, is classified as a “toxic chemical” and severe exposure can be fatal.
The Kremlin, which along with Ukraine is a signatory of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, has rejected claims that it uses toxic gases as “baseless”. But Colonel Artem Vlasyuk of Ukraine’s RCBZ claimed that Russian forces had used the agents at least 7,730 times since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, including 2,351 recorded occasions since the start of this year.
“Forty per cent of these were recorded as the direct use of K-51 and RG-Vo grenades, which contain CS and CN gas,” Vlasyuk said. “The rest of the cases we identify as the use of dangerous chemicals by the enemy, classified as unknown substances because our units did not have access to the place of use due to intense enemy fire or the loss of positions where these dangerous chemical substances were used.”
Chemical weapon attacks
Since the onset of the full-scale invasion, there have been
7,730 Russian chemical weapon attacks in Ukraine. Of these,
3,524 occurred since September
The Times received reports of dozens of Ukrainian soldiers affected by gas attacks in at least six frontline zones, as well as those who did not suffer lasting damage, or who were able to put on their gas masks in time.
The RCBZ said that Ukrainian investigators were looking into specific incidents, including deaths, and could not comment before charges were brought. “We can’t exclude the use of deadly substances by Russia in combination with tear gas,” Vlasyuk added.
Kyiv’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “The Russian military regularly uses riot-control agents and ammunition equipped with dangerous chemicals against Ukrainian forces, including those of unknown origin. Unfortunately, a number of fatalities among the Ukrainian military were recorded.”
Russia’s Iranian-made “kamikaze” attack drones have also been armed with payloads of CS gas for attacks from the air, officials from Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council announced on Wednesday.
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The Kremlin has in turn, and without providing evidence, alleged Ukraine’s forces have used “a wide range of toxic chemicals against Russian servicemen and public officials”, including fertilisers, pesticides and other banned toxins. Kyiv has denied this.
On the war’s southern front, Russian troops are pushing to take the town of Orikhiv, which would bring them within
artillery range of Zaporizhzhia city, capital of the region of the same name, which Putin claims to have annexed.
Soldiers of Ukraine’s 65th Mechanised Brigade who are defending the town said they were coming under “daily” chemical attacks and displayed used tear gas grenades and improvised canisters they said had been dropped by Russian drones.
A chloropicrin grenade found by Ukrainian soldiers in Orikhiv
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Senior Lieutenant Sergey Skibchyk also claimed that “very often the Russians disguise poisonous substances as tear gas, or come up with their own dispersal devices, such as adding ordinary plastic bottles with various elements that, when combined or when exploded, emit aerosols that are lethal”.
“We are not talking tears and coughing, we are talking about chemical burns of the larynx, lungs, oral cavity, nasopharynx and even the skin,” Skibchyk said.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has issued two reports confirming the presence of CS gas on Ukrainian battlefields, but declined to comment on the use of other types of gases.
Its work is based on samples taken from the Ukrainian side, but it has not attributed blame or commented on the scale of the chemicals’ use.
The UK Ministry of Defence said: “Putin’s use of chemical agents as part of his illegal invasion of Ukraine is a clear violation of international law … in December 2024, the UK contributed a further £3 million for the procurement of respirators for Ukraine.”
However in the heat of battle, collecting physical evidence of chemical weapons while ducking for cover and trying to evacuate the wounded under fire is often the last thing on soldiers’ minds.
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Access to battlefields or territory controlled by Putin’s forces is dangerous, while the gases and chemical residues they leave behind do not typically persist long enough for study.
Lennie Phillips, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said any international mission to establish what chemical weapons were being used in Ukraine, and how, would be impossible without a ceasefire.
“If you’re talking about chemicals being used against people… in the middle of a conflict, full stop, their eyes are on the enemy [and] dealing with the aftermath,” he explained. “I think the last thing on their mind, understandably, would be, ‘Oh, let’s get a sample so we can send it off and we can see what the Russians have been using.’ … The Russians know that.”
Gasping and vomiting: the victims’ accounts
Ukraine is conducting its own investigations into Russia’s alleged use of chemical weapons, with the assistance of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which monitors breaches of the Chemical Weapons Convention, signed by 193 states.
In the meantime, the main evidence of Russia’s gas warfare comes from witness testimonies; from doctors, pathologists and soldiers exposed to those attacks. Here are some of their stories.
Gassed from above
Sergeant “Haika”, 29, a medic serving with 1st Battalion, 80th Air Assault Brigade, said that in November her unit was fighting at the village of Klishchiivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, when it was hit with a chemical agent.
“I remember one gas attack on six of our soldiers: one was killed and the other five were poisoned. They suffered constant tears, salivation, short-term loss of vision, suffocation,” she said. The dead soldier had suffered no visible injuries, she added.
They never found out what the substance was, as their withdrawal with the body of the killed soldier was delayed by fighting. The surviving soldiers went on to suffer from bronchitis and other respiratory issues, she added.
Booby trapped
Sergeant Vitaliy Fortunov suffered high temperatures and coughed up blood for weeks after uncovering powder
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In a battle, for the village of Robotyne in Zaporizhzhia, in February, Sergeant Vitaliy Fortunov of the 65th Mechanised Brigade, was digging to improve a position his company had captured from the Russians. As he did so, he uncovered a layer of powder, which flew into the air with the tip of his shovel.
Fortunov, 37, developed a cough that grew worse until he was struggling with each breath. He claims that for 40 days he suffered high temperatures and coughed up blood. Doctors told him he had been exposed to an unknown substance.
Rockets that suffocate
Later that same month, some 170 miles to the north during the battle for Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, the Russians launched a barrage of rockets from multiple-launch systems at Ukrainian positions.
“The guys were in a dugout, in cover and stopped responding,” one officer, who requested anonymity, said. “When the group went to them, it turned out that the guys were all asleep. And when we started waking them up, everyone was vomiting a lot. They were taken outside, they were suffocating. They say that there was a gas release in front of the dugout, but without smell, without colour. The same thing happened on a neighbouring position after a multiple launch rocket system strike. The guys were also vomiting.”
Such attacks have continued. On the night of April 1, Ukrainian soldiers reported an attack on their position near the town of Lyman by a multiple-launch rocket system. Ukrainian rescuers who reached the scene found the bodies of three of their drone pilots.
“When we got there, three soldiers were dead, all of them had foaming at the mouth and had no physical injuries,” said “Desno”, a soldier from the mechanised brigade stationed there. “The remains of the ammunition were soaked with [an unknown] substance,” he added.
Signs of poisoning
When a Russian drone dropped a grenade on the position of Captain Dmytro Kravchuk and Petro Galeru, it caused only a small explosion in their dugout, their fellow soldiers said. Hours later, their rescuers found no visible injuries on their dead comrades, only rings of foam around their mouths.
When their bodies arrived at the morgue in Dnipro, pathologists were struck by the lack of visible injuries — but each had fatally high levels of carboxyhemoglobin in their blood, an indication of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Serhiy Savchenko, deputy head of the morgue’s forensic medical examination bureau, told The Times that he had seen 14 such suspicious deaths with strange symptoms in less than a year. Each time soldiers had reported a gas attack, he said.
Sergeant Kosmos felt suffocated after inhaling gas from a grenade dropped by a Russian drone
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Carbon monoxide inhalation alone should not cause foaming around the mouth, said Alastair Hay, emeritus professor of environmental toxicology at the University of Leeds. “That would indicate some irritant, probably, something to cause secretion into the lung,” Hay said. “That would suggest to me some mixed exposure, that carbon monoxide (CO) was one of the consequences, likely from detonation in a confined space. The irritant would affect lung function and compromise breathing so the victim’s blood oxygen levels would be lowered.”
“The CO then degrades oxygen levels further until a lethal concentration is reached.”
A survivor’s tale
“Khmil” was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis after the attack
“Khmil” is still living with the effects of one of the earliest apparent attacks by Russia using chemical agents. A soldier from the 65th Brigade stationed at Robotyne, he said he was poisoned by a first-person view drone that flew into his dugout and dispersed a “grey fog” on December 27, 2023. Most of the soldiers managed to get their gas masks on but he fell unconscious before he could do so.
When he came to, he was vomiting and had a burning sensation all over his skin, and constant tears. He was treated and was diagnosed with acute laryngotracheitis as a result of exposure to an unknown chemical substance. His health has continued to degrade and he has been diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis. “When I went to war, my wife was in the second month of her pregnancy,” said Khmil. “When my daughter was born, I had a vacation to see her, but I was so weak after this poisoning I couldn’t hold her. That hurts.”
1st Presidential Operational Brigade Bureviy;
