A Toxic Trail Exposed: How Russia Makes Chemical Weapons And Uses Them Against Ukraine

The website of Russia's Scientific Research Institute for Applied Chemistry (NIIPH) features images of fireworks displays and one of the items it produces: sparklers in packages adorned with drawings of a holiday tree, a Santa Claus figure, and cute kids and critters.

But the heavily Western-sanctioned institute in an old monastery town outside Moscow is a crucial link in a production and supply chain that puts toxic chemical grenades and other weapons in the hands of Russian forces fighting in the war against Ukraine.

Reporting by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, shows how Russia is churning out RG-Vo grenades and firing them at Ukrainian troops -- despite sanctions and a global convention that bans their use on the battlefield. The Schemes investigation also details links between Chinese firms and Russia's alleged deployment of incendiary weapons whose use in civilian areas is prohibited.

Supplied with crucial components by Russian plants that have not been hit with punitive measures by the West over the war against Ukraine, NIIPH is making the RG-Vo, a type of toxic gas grenade experts say has been in frequent use by Russian forces since late 2023.

The institute also imports raw materials from abroad, receiving red phosphorus from Chinese companies. Red phosphorus can be converted into white phosphorus, a potentially deadly weapon that Russian forces have been accused of using repeatedly since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Its use in populated areas is forbidden.

Schemes also identified Russian units that have used the toxic grenades, which are usually delivered by drones and bear the Cyrillic letters RG-Vo stenciled on their side – apparently an abbreviation for "hand grenade – poisonous substance." They can contain toxic CS or CN tear gas -– often used riot control agents (RCA) but prohibited "as a method of warfare" under the Chemical Weapons Convention, of which Russia and Ukraine are both parties.

'You Can't Breathe'

But that's exactly what Russia has been doing during the full-scale invasion, according to Kyiv, its international backers, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) -- and to Ukrainian soldiers wounded in attacks intended to "smoke out" servicemen from their cover and expose them to withering fire.

"We entered our positions, and the gas was released after about four or five days," said Oleksandr Nyahu, a soldier whose unit came under attack this spring while defending Vodyane Druhe, a village in the Donetsk region near the embattled city of Pokrovsk.

"It burns so badly. Your eyes water, your face starts to burn," Nyahu, one of several soldiers who were undergoing rehabilitation at a hospital in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region after that attack, told Schemes. "You can't breathe in fully…you inhale and you start gagging and coughing."

"This is their practice today: FPV (first-person view) drones and chemical weapons that are invisible," said a fellow serviceman, Ihor Kozarenko. "You cry, you belch – you have all the symptoms. But you still have to shoot back. No option."

"This is a war crime -- to conduct combat operations using practically barbaric methods in the 21st century," Amil Omarov, the chief prosecutor in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, said of Russia's use of toxic chemicals to flush Ukrainian troops from cover.

Toxic Playbook

In May 2024, the United States said it determined that Russia "has used the chemical weapon chloropicrin against Ukrainian forces" and "has used riot control agents as a method of warfare in Ukraine," both violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

"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," the State Department said. "Russia's ongoing disregard for its obligations to the CWC comes from the same playbook as its operations to poison Aleksei Navalny and Sergei and Yulia Skripal with Novichok nerve agents."

The near-fatal poisonings for former double-agent Skripal in Britain in 2018 and Kremlin opponent Navalny in Russia in 2020 drew horrified attention to what Western governments say is an undeclared Russian chemical weapons program.

Russia has not acknowledged its use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. But later in May 2024, state-funded Russian channel RT posted a report on Telegram in which a military blogger points to what appears to be a discharged RG-Vo grenade –- which he said was fired by Russian forces-- in an area of the Donetsk region where Moscow's troops had pushed Ukraine out in December 2023.