Russia is the only superpower to have actually used chemical weapons in the 21st century

This week, the US and British military experts expressed grave concerns that Russia might use chemical weapons against the fighters in Mariupol in the war.

Chemical weapons were already internationally recognized as unacceptable in wartime in 1899, when the Hague Convention banned (for five years) the use of poisonous substances in war. The Convention was signed by Russia, France, Britain, China, Iran, and the USA. However, the US Congress did not support the prohibition of chemical weapons. However, Article 23 of the Hague Convention's 1907 treaty on the conduct of warfare completely banned chemical weapons. However, the international agreement did not prevent the countries that ratified the Hague Convention from using them a few years later, when World War I broke out.

Germany began using chemical weapons on April 24, 1915, when the Battle of Ypres killed 90 soldiers in the first minutes of a chlorine gas attack, 46 soldiers died after being evacuated to hospital and 12 soldiers died in hospital after prolonged suffering. At Ypres in April 1915, the Germans managed to break the front 7 km wide and up to 2 km deep with the help of chemical weapons (chlorine gas). By the end of May 1915, 15,000 English and French soldiers had been poisoned in the Battle of Ypres, of whom 5000 died. From September 25, 1915, chemical weapons were also used by the British army against the German army.

During World War I, chemical weapons were also widely used in Latvia. On September 25, 1916, the Germans attacked the town of Ikšķile with gas (phosgene). During the attack, 811 soldiers were severely poisoned and 272 died. As from 1916, almost all soldiers on both sides were equipped with gas masks, and chemical artillery shells were subsequently used. On July 13, 1917, at Ypres, the Germans used for the first time artillery shells filled with mustard gas. Chlorine is lighter than air, but mustard gas is heavier. Mustard gas is poisonous at concentrations above 0,1 mg/cm2 in contact with the skin. Rubberized cloth and gas masks do not stop mustard gas. The lethal dose (50% mortality) in contact is 70 mg/kg. Breathing air for one hour at a concentration of 0,015 mg/liter of mustard gas results in a lethal dose. If the concentration of mustard gas is 15 times less than the lethal dose, then within 30 minutes poisoning of the ocular mucosa begins, leading to blindness. Because mustard gas is heavier than air, the sites where mustard gas was used remained contaminated for several months. There is no antidote for mustard gas, so the poisoning is long-lasting and very difficult to treat. In September 1917, when the German army captured Riga, the front line was breached using chemical weapons - chemical artillery shells of mustard gas. The German artillery fired four chemical (mustard gas-filled) shells for every one fragmentation shell.

The use of mustard gas in World War I resulted in relatively few fatalities, but many serious injuries - thousands of blind soldiers. During World War I, 1.3 million people were poisoned with chemical weapons, of whom 90,000 died. In 1917, 25% of all casualties on all fronts in World War I were caused by chemical weapons. After World War I, a common agreement was reached to ban such weapons. The Geneva Convention, which completely banned the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons in war, was signed in 1925 and entered into force in 1928. Latvia ratified the Geneva Convention in 1931. However, the Convention was not ratified by the USA until 1975.

But the ban did not prevent the creation of new chemical weapons. In the late 1930s, German chemists synthesized the first nerve paralytic gases, which were extremely lethal even with very low concentrations of the gas in air (the lethal dose of tabun and sarin in humans is only 0.55 mg/kg). In 1944, German chemists synthesized soman, which has a 50% lethality even at air concentrations of only 70 mg/m3.

Chemical weapons were developed and produced throughout World War II, but were not used in the war between the Allies (USA, USSR and UK) and Germany (Japan).

After World War II, the USSR acquired the technical documentation of German chemical weapons production and transferred the nerve gas production facilities to the USSR.

One of the most poisonous nerve gases (C11H26NO2PS) or VX was discovered between 1952 and 1955. The lethal dose of VX (50% mortality) is as low as 2 mg in skin contact or 30 mg*min/m3 concentration in air. The US added VX to its chemical weapons arsenal and began producing it in 1961, but destroyed its entire stockpile in 1969-1970. It is suspected that the brother of the North Korean dictator was killed by VX being sprayed in his face at Kuala Lumpur airport on February 14, 2017.

Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran during the 1980-1988 war. Despite evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, the US blocked the resolution in the UN Security Council. Already at 1984, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported to the US government that Iraq had mustard gas in its armaments and would also include nerve gases, but the CIA advised the US government to conceal information that Iraq had used chemical weapons because it was not in the security interests of the US and NATO members. Only a small part of the CIA reports on Iraq's chemical weapons have now been declassified. It has been proven that the Iraqi army used mustard gas to suppress the Kurdish insurgency, but after the Gulf War (1991) Iraq agreed to destroy all chemical weapons and, to everyone's astonishment, did indeed destroy them. The disbelief that Iraq's chemical weapons had actually been destroyed was the motive for the US and allies (including Latvia) to go to war with Iraq in 2003.

In the USSR, it was discovered in 1989 that if the phosphorus atom in VX chemical weapons was replaced by a sulfur or selenium atom, the resulting substance (called novichok) was up to 10 times more toxic than VX. In 1990, it was these chemical weapons that were incorporated into the armament of the USSR army. In Russia, the structural formulas of all these substances are secret. It was probably the novichok-based nerve agent that was used in England on March 4, 2019, against Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who fled Russia.

The inclusion of advanced chemical weapons in the armaments of the USSR army did not prevent USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George W. Bush from signing a bilateral treaty on June 1, 1990, to stop the production of chemical weapons and to destroy chemical weapons stockpiles.

However, despite the agreements signed by Gorbachev, Russia continued to develop chemical weapons. The concept of the use of chemical weapons has changed. Russia's latest chemical weapons are designed for use against targets in besieged fortresses, underground bunkers, or facilities with closed ventilation systems. There is convincing evidence of the development and use of exactly these types of chemical weapons in Russian military operations. On October 23, 2002, 40 Chechen fighters captured some 850 hostages during the Nord-Ost musical performance at the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow. In order to free the hostages, a paralytic gas was released into the ventilation system of the theatre, killing 40 terrorists and, unfortunately, 130 hostages. The true number of dead and poisoned (many of whom were disabled for life), as well as the compound used, has been classified in Russia. The hostages included a number of British citizens whose clothing was subsequently scrutinized and the findings showed that Russian special forces were very likely using sprays of anesthetic opioids.

There are chemicals that are not prohibited by the "Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction" for use in the domestic suppression of riots and mass disorder. They are substances "which can produce rapidly in humans sensory irritation or disabling physical effects which disappear within a short time following termination of exposure." Such agents include tear gas and many other agents authorized for the police force to use.

But the substance used in the Dubrovka Theatre was such a lethal chemical weapon that it is undoubtedly subject to prohibition. Except that no sanctions were introduced against Russia at the time. After September 11, 2001, the war on terror had begun. Russia was an ally of the United States in the fight against the Islamic terrorists and the use of chemical weapons in the center of Moscow, with many casualties, went without international condemnation.

It can therefore be concluded that the tactics of the Russian Armed Forces include the use of chemical weapons against besieged fortified systems (such as those in Mariupol) and that any suspicion of the use of chemical weapons by Russia must be verified with the utmost care by independent observers.

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