Ukraine says Russia steps up illegal use of tear gas to clear trenches

Reuters:  The Ukrainian infantryman, call sign "Ray", said he quickly pulled on his gas mask after a Russian drone flying above his trench on the eastern front dropped a tear gas grenade.

"It's like pepper spray, it makes your eyes tear up. It's not lethal, but it disturbs and knocks you out. It makes it very difficult to carry out your duties once you've inhaled it," he told Reuters of the attack he said he experienced in January.

The Ukrainian military says Russia has ramped up its illegal use of riot control agents on the front to try to clear trenches as it begins to make bigger advances in the east more than two years since its full-scale invasion.

Riot control agents such as tear gas are banned on the battlefield by the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which Russia and Ukraine are signatories to.

While civilians can usually escape from tear gas used to break up riots or protests in cities, soldiers stuck in trenches without gas masks must either flee under enemy fire or risk suffocating on the gas.

Colonel Serhii Pakhomov, acting head of the military's atomic, biological and chemical defence forces, said Kyiv had recorded around 900 uses of riot control agents by Russia in the past six months out of over 1,400 since the Feb. 2022 invasion.

Russia mainly used K-51, VOH and RH-VO hand-grenades loaded with CS, CN and other gases, he told Reuters in an interview. Ukraine's military previously alleged that Russian forces also used chloropicrin, which was used as poison gas in World War I.

Russia's embassy in The Netherlands, where the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is based, said on X in January that allegations about Russia's use of grenades with CN gas use unconfirmed data. Russia's defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Moscow previously accused Ukrainian forces of using chemical weapons, something Kyiv denies. Reuters has not been able to independently verify the use of banned chemical substances by either side.