Julian Spencer-Churchill
Dr Julian Spencer-Churchill is associate professor of international relations at Concordia University and is a former operations officer, 3 Field Engineer Regiment, from the latter end of the Cold War to shortly after 9/11.
Frustration in the Kremlin over repeated Russian military failures in their prosecution of the war against Ukraine is leading a desperate Moscow to explore ever more brutal strategies to undermine their adversary’s will to resist. Russian atrocities against Ukrainian non-combatants and prisoners of war, and mass deportations, are primarily the result of dehumanizing state propaganda, and the lack of moral restraint in the Russian soldiery and supervising officers. However, the artillery and missile bombardment of Ukrainian non-combatants is a deliberate strategy by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration, like the threat of using nuclear weapons, to break the stalemate of the war, which is having a severe reputational impact on the Russian military’s ability to deter threats and assert its influence along its long border.
Moscow may be tempted to escalate its use of chemical weapons (CW) as part of its incremental exploration of winning tactics. In a significant escalation, Russia has been accused of using chloropicrin, a choking agent, against Ukrainian forces, with up to 50 soldiers treated. The accusations, first originated from the Tavria operational-strategic group commander in southeastern Ukraine. Ukrainian sources cite over 1,891 incidents of chemical weapons use as of May 3, 2024, with a sharp increase since December 2023. Although concrete evidence remains scarce due to the active conflict zones and information management policies, the use of chloropicrin, a chemical banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention for riot control, indicates a severe breach. The delivery systems used by Russia are under scrutiny, with allegations ranging from modified K-51 hand grenades to MLRS-launched rockets, highlighting a concerning advancement in chemical warfare tactics. Despite the lack of confirmed casualties specifically from chloropicrin, its use, often accompanied by reports of chlorine smells, raises alarms about Russia's potential violation of international norms and agreements. It is also aligned with Soviet use of these agents as riot control agents in Georgia in 1991.
While some authors doubt whether chemical weapons have ever demonstrated effectiveness, when compared with well-targeted artillery or airstrikes, their area effects would provide a force multiplier to the current Russian tactic of indiscriminate bombardment. A surprise chemical attack against unprepared Ukrainian infantry in the defense, even on a small scale, would temporarily break the front, creating the conditions for an offensive breakthrough by Russian mechanized forces. Against Ukrainian logistics positions in depth, including airfields, command complexes, train depots, ports, and hospitals, especially in conjunction with explosive, incendiary white phosphorous and cluster munitions, would lead to extended evacuations of whole areas, and consequent disruption of supplies and Ukraine’s ability to maintain a continuous front. A sustained, broad-fronted and in-depth use of mixed (nerve and corrosive) agents, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of broad sectors of the Ukrainian front, perhaps even reversing the territorial gains around Khakiv and in Donetsk.
By the end of the First World War, chemical shells constituted a quarter of fired artillery rounds, inflicting 18 per cent of casualties, of which only another 15 per cent were fatal: killed 0.75 and injured 10.5 soldiers. In addition, the resulting chronic cardiovascular injury resulted in susceptibility to the post-war influenza epidemic and shortened life expectancy among survivors. Contemporary attacks that mixed chemical shelling against a position of prepared, well-trained troops, would produce casualty rates of 10–30 per cent, and as high as 80 per cent against untrained troops. Non-persisting chemical agents can breach forward defences as they act very quickly, are difficult to detect, are highly lethal and can dissipate within minutes. As a result, advancing troops would not even need protective equipment and would require little preparation to take advantage of its use. Persisting agents, on the other hand, can last for hours or even days and can protect flanks, enable area denial, and reduce mobility. The combination of persistent and non-persistent agents can be used in a layered approach to offer the highest chance of achieving tactical objectives.
However, the prevailing evidence from the Italian use of first-generation gas in its 1935 invasion and later counter-insurgency in Ethiopia, is that it had its greatest effect on non-combatants, such as at Jijiga, and during the rout of Abyssinian forces, such as at Ganale Doria. Italian tactical air power, machine guns, tanks, and Italy’s overwhelming numbers were far more decisive. Conservative backbencher, Winston Churchill, in a 1934 speech, identified incendiary bombs as far more lethal and dangerous to London than German gas, though he was unaware of the effects of the new nerve agents.
Sporadic use of chemical weapons by Iraq was decisive in blunting attacks by unprepared Iranian infantry during the Iran-Iraq War. Even though well-trained soldiers with chemical protection equipment can reduce their daily losses during chemical attacks to two per cent per day, their combat performance suffers significantly. Even partial exposure to nerve gasses can induce double-vision, trembling and other neurological disorders. It is instructive to the war in Ukraine, that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein decided to use chemical weapons against the Kurdish villages in the north as part of the 1987 Anfal campaign, following a recommendation from military intelligence, in order to raise morale and secure control. According to the Saddam Hussein FBI Counterterrorism Files, Saddam ordered the attack, without consulting others and fully aware of the international consequences, in a moment of desperation and in response to the Iranian capture of the Al Faw peninsula. The deeper Iranian forces penetrated into Iraq, the greater the incentive to escalate to chemical weapons use.
A sizable delivery of NATO countermeasures, including protective clothing, gas masks and canisters, field decontamination stations for personnel and vehicles (as gasses can penetrate into the paint of vehicles), and medical supplies like atropine, would significantly reduce Ukrainian battlefield losses. However, stockpiles from the Cold War and the 1991 Gulf War, have long been depleted, and the West will need to make a major industrial effort to produce the protective gear at scale. The degrading effects of corrosive chemicals, which are typically deployed in conjunction with nerve agents, requires protective clothing to be replaced every few days.
Severe overheating, muffled communications, and the poor visibility typical of chemical protection suits will cause soldiers to lose over 50 per cent of their operational efficiency, compromising the demands of detailed work like aircraft piloting and maintenance, and stealthy movement required of the infantry. Worse still, exposure anxiety has the same symptoms as actual exposure, which can lead to the erroneous administration of antidotes like atropine, which can have their own severe side effects.
Even worse, a sustained Russian chemical attack against Ukraine cities would yield an order of magnitude greater losses than current missile and drone strikes, producing huge refugee flows, and would have a calamitous effect on morale, almost certainly leading to concessionary ceasefire negotiations by Kyiv. There are no surviving records that explain why Germany did not use chemical weapons against civilian targets during the first world war, but it is assumed by most scholars that mutual deterrence enforced restraint.
Non-use in the European theatre of the second world war was established by an explicit Anglo-German declaration at its outbreak in 1939, but sustained by the reciprocal deterrence of British biological agents (principally weaponized anthrax) and German nerve gasses. Despite China’s weakness, implicit US threats restrained Japan’s war in China, resulting in only a few lethal applications of blister agents as in 1944 at Hengyang. There were occasional casualty-producing accidents, such as the German bombing of a US ship carrying 100 tons of HD mustard gas in 2,000 M47A1 mustard gas bombs in Bari harbor in Southern Italy, in December 1943.
Although Russia confirmed the destruction of the last of the USSR’s Cold War 40,000 ton arsenal of chemical agents in 2017, large-scale accumulation of agents as a biproduct of chemical manufacturing is easy. Though obsolete as a CW agent, chlorine is widely available. In more recent memory, it saw reported use in Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia, and Sri Lanka, and, out of their abundance, cannot be listed as a controlled agents. Hydrogen cyanide is highly toxic and used extensively in mining. Thiodiglycol, the precursor to mustard gas, is used as a solvent in textiles and dyes. In 1988, Iraq was producing 70 tons of mustard and six tons of nerve agents, monthly. On December 3, 1984, the Union Carbide cotton pesticide plant at Bhopal, India, released 42 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate that killed 2,500 people and injured 200,000 (50,000 continue to suffer chronic injuries). With contemporary computing power, generative AI models can design new chemically stable and increasingly deadly molecules. Novichok, a nerve agent developed by Russia, is not listed as a scheduled substance out of the concern that disclosing its molecular structure would allow for other actors to replicate and proliferate it.
Simply seeking to establish norms and relying on states’ moral reservations not to use chemical weapons is not a reliable means of deterrence, since conditions and discourse can change. Furthermore, some have argued that Washington’s policy of promoting norms of restraint is cynically the result of a strategic calculus that has concluded that the US comparative advantage is with nuclear weapons. The most significant multilateral effort to ban the stockpiling, production, and use of chemical weapons, is the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Its attendant verification agency is the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), whose most severe challenge is that while there is a list of proscribed agents, most chemicals are dual-use and have no precise regulations method for limiting their manufacture, and most chemicals have substitutes.
Despite being dependent on voluntary compliance, the CWC contributes to deterrence against a Russian chemical weapons attack on Ukraine through certified verification, enabling a coordinated response, and delegitimation. First, in an instance of the use of chemical agents in Ukraine, the OPCW will provide a prompt confirmation of the evidence, as it did in Syria in 2015, despite non-cooperation from the Damascus government. Second, this validation of the incident then enables the coordination of an international response, in the form of targeted sanctions, as in the case of Syria. Although the CWC does not have any independent role in enforcement, it has, for example, anticipated Russian chemical weapons use by condemning Moscow’s false claims of Ukrainian use. In the event of a chemical attack, states allied with Moscow and engaging in the commerce of chemical manufactures, such as Iran, North Korea, and China, may be subject to further trade penalties. Third, Putin’s popularity is contingent on him delivering a balance of security and prosperity, as well as satisfying the Russian people’s self-identification of Russia as engaging in legitimate and moral behavior. The OPCW, as a super-national organisation, while it may be toothless, benefits from being a multilateral organ of 193 countries, and therefore operates with the credibility of international norms, and not simply representing the interests of Ukraine’s allies. As well, Russia lacks a veto power in the OPCW’s dispute-settlement process.
The OPCW measures identified above, in conjunction with an increase in the provision of conventional military supplies to Ukraine, are the optimal response to a battlefield use of nuclear weapons by Russia. Enabling a retaliatory chemical weapons response by Ukraine, even if limited, would be entirely counter-productive: it would erode the support of Ukraine’s allies, and alienate neutral states beyond the point of recovery. Russian chemical tactics could be used to justify equipping Ukraine with long-range systems aimed at safely striking at military targets in Russia’s interior. This is because Russia would likely use nuclear weapons to signal geographic redlines, such as over possession of Sevastopol in the Crimea, whereas chemical weapons are more typically used by leaders who want to preserve the political freedom to back down. However, in the event that the Kremlin uses chemical weapons as an instrument to depopulate Ukrainian cities, the scale of which would constitute genocide, then the only remaining solution is the entry of NATO ground troops into Ukraine.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
