Ukrainian TV stations have been broadcasting messages explaining what to do in the event of a chemical weapons attack — a horrific prospect in an already gruesome war, but one that may also be unlikely.
U.S. President Joe Biden has said there are “real concerns” that Russia might resort to using the internationally banned munitions, as it looks to move past its struggles on the ground in its invasion of Ukraine. European nations have expressed similar worries, saying they wouldn’t put it past Russian President Vladimir Putin to do so.
“I don’t really expect it to happen. I mean why? What would be the use of chemical weapons?,” Michael Kofman, a specialist on the Russian military at CNA, a Washington think tank, said on a podcast Sunday. With little to gain militarily, he said, there would be enormous potential downsides.
“The biggest risk for Russia in using them is that they would build a very strong case for NATO intervention,” Kofman said. “That’s something they want to avoid.”
North Atlantic Treaty Organization chief Jens Stoltenberg said recently the alliance had activated chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense elements as part of its defense plans. He also warned that their deployment by Russia would change the nature of the conflict.
Having inherited a 40,000-ton chemical weapons stockpile from the former Soviet Union, the Russian government said in 2017 it had destroyed them all. The U.S. is due to eradicate the last vestiges of its stock by 2023.
U.K. and German investigations have found that Russian operatives twice used Novichok, a nerve agent developed in the Soviet era, to attack opponents in England, in 2018, and within Russia in 2020. Russia denied involvement in both cases.
During Syria’s long civil war, one study counted 336 chemical weapons attacks using the nerve agent sarin, chlorine aerosols or so-called mustard gas. The vast majority, according to the report, were perpetrated by Syrian government forces, which have fought alongside Russia since it entered that conflict in 2015.
But what may have worked for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against an enemy that included Islamic State and offshoots of Al-Qaeda — both globally recognized terrorist organizations — may be of less value to Putin in Ukraine.
Chemical weapons have a checkered history and are relatively rarely used, precisely because they come with big uncertainties and drawbacks, not least to the international reputation of the user.
Assad had almost no standing left by the time he began using chemical weapons in 2013. The international outcry should Russia be seen to have used the weapons in Ukraine would be immediate.
On the battlefield, chemical munitions are deeply problematic, according to Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert who served in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and later as adviser to the U.S. President’s office on chemical and biological weapons preparedness.
“They are highly dependent upon environmental factors, such as wind speed, wind direction, temperature, precipitation, the type of terrain they are used on,” wrote Kaszeta, now at the U.K.’s Royal United Services Institute, in emailed responses to questions.
NATO officials say they are studying different potential scenarios, including a deniable false flag event that could involve an accident at a chemical plant, given the significant amounts of ammonia, chlorine and nitrates used in Ukraine’s industries.
The U.S. State Department also has said Russia may be spreading false allegations that America has developed chemical and biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine “to try to justify further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attacks” in the country.
The fear is that a false flag operation would be used to bolster the narrative for Putin’s invasion or escalate the conflict more broadly. Chlorine and ammonia are most likely to be used as they are more easily blamed on Ukraine, says Kaszeta, adding they would “literally make a big stink, but are largely pointless as battlefield weapons.”
The Kremlin has dismissed U.S. warnings that it might use chemical weapons, calling it an “ephemeral threat” aimed at “distracting attention” from the alleged U.S. labs in Ukraine.
Russia has a large inventory of conventional arms systems capable of killing populations and destroying cities at scale, most of which already have been used in Ukraine. Those include incendiary phosphate weapons, cluster bombs, large air-dropped bombs, thermobaric vacuum bombs and the world’s largest array of heavy artillery.
Kaszeta estimates that chemical weapons historically have proved more effective than conventional alternatives in just 5% of cases, compared with 10% in which their impact was roughly comparable, and 85% where they were of less military value.
“Friendly casualties are almost always a given and are bad for morale” with chemical weapons, Kaszeta said. “There’s anecdotal stories from World War I of soldiers leaving the line to find the artillery battery that fired a chemical attack, and shoot them.”
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