Ukraine's army says Russia has stepped up its illegal use of tear gas , to clear trenches as it begins to make more headway in the east more than two years after its full-scale invasion, reports "Reuters".
Poisonous warfare agents (BOW) 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 the tear gas, which is mostly used to break up rallies and protests in cities, soldiers stuck in trenches without gas masks must either run under enemy fire or risk suffocation from the gas.
Colonel Sergiy Pakhomov, acting chief of the army's nuclear, biological and chemical defense forces, said Kiev had recorded about 900 uses of tear gas and other similar weapons by Russia in the past six months.
Russia mainly uses K-51, VOH and RH-VO hand grenades loaded with CS, CN and other gases, he said in an interview with Reuters. The Ukrainian military previously claimed that Russian forces also used chlorpicrin, which was used as a poison gas in World War I.
The Russian embassy in the Netherlands, where the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is based, told X in January that claims of Russia's use of CN gas grenades used unconfirmed data.
Moscow has previously accused Ukrainian forces of using chemical weapons, something Kiev strongly denies.