Let's now shift our focus to the war in Ukraine.
Has it turned into chemical warfare?
I'm asking this question because a war of words has
broken out over the alleged use of chemical weapons in
Ukraine.
Are chemical weapons indeed being used?
And what are chemical weapons?
What are the international rules around this?
In this edition of Gravitas Deep Dive,
we tell you all about it.
On Wednesday, the US accused Russia of violating the international
chemical weapons ban by deploying the choking agent called chloropissarin
against Ukrainian troops, the US State Department said in a
statement.
And I'm quoting the use of such chemicals is not
an isolated incident and is probably driven by Russian forces
desire to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve
tactical gains on the battlefield.
What is chloropistorin? It is a banned choking agent.
It has been used in war before.
The German forces had fired the gas against Allied troops
during World War One.
And earlier this month Ukrainian military accused Russia of using
the chemical weapon as it presses its biggest advances in
eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian military says that in addition to it,
Russian forces have used grenades loaded with CS and CN
gases.
Ukraine says that at least
500 Ukrainian soldiers have been treated for exposure to toxic
substances.
Now, what does Russia have to say about these allegations?
Moscow vehemently denies it. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected
the claims
by the US, calling them absolutely baseless.
We have seen the news about it.
As usual, these announcements are groundless.
Russia was and remains committed to its obligations in respect
of international law.
In the sphere mentioned,
Moscow has accused the Ukrainian forces of staging chemical weapons
incidents with a view to blaming Russia for them.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in late February that the
use of toxic chemicals by the Ukrainians has become systematic.
Russia has accused Ukraine of using improvised drone dropped chemical
weapons.
Russia said that the first recorded instance of Ukraine using
chloropistorin was during the siege of the House of Trade
Unions in Odessa in 2014.
Now, while the two sides argue,
here's what you should know about chemical weapons.
Like nuclear weapons and biological weapons,
chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction.
It has been used in war times.
It was first used in World War 2 and then
in the Iran Iraq war and the Syrian civil war.
During the Cold War, the US and the erstwhile Soviet
Union built up enormous stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Further, there are many types of chemical weapons that are
choking agents,
blister agents, blood agents, nerve agents,
riot control agents.
Chloropestrin is a riot control agent.
On September 3, 1992, the United Nations Conference on Disarmament
adopted the Chemical Weapons Convention,
or CWC. It entered into force on 29 April
1997. It bans the production and use of chemical weapons.
It also requires the 193 countries that have ratified the
convention,
which include Russia and the US,
to destroy any stocks of banned chemicals
back to the present. the US State Department is expected
to convey its determination that Russia has violated the CWC
to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of using
the chemical weapon in the two years of war,
but the organization says it has not been formally asked
to open an investigation into the use of prohibited substances
in Ukraine.
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