ARTICLE BY AMBASSADOR ANDRII PRAVEDNYK, AMBASSADOR OF UKRAINE TO KENYA
Last weekend all Ukrainians, including those living abroad, woke up early in the morning, hearing air-raid alerts.
Even us, witnesses and seasoned veterans of the war for survival with the last colonial empire in the world, were taken by surprise by this ridiculous and blatant attack on civilian infrastructure.
Days later yet another residential area was hit, with dozens new victims, including women and children.
We hear the air alerts even being abroad: the war of the new age indeed has a digital dimension: every smartphone, used by Ukrainians, has an application, sending us warning signals at the very moment our hometowns are under attack.
However modern the war of the XXI century may look like from afar, Russia is developing and vastly using weapons of destruction belonging to prehistoric times: poisonous and illegal.
The modern world is gradually recognising the tactics of the aggressor and steadily pushes it out of the governing bodies of international institutions.
Yet Russia exploits any opportunity to make its warfare legit, to use not only conventional methods but also hazardous materials, killing every living soul, that opposes its expansion.
On numerous occasions, the Russian Federation has used Riot Control Agents (RCAs) in Ukraine, despite this being prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention under Article I paragraph 5, which states that “Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare.”
In December 2023, Forbes shared a drone video of Russian forces dropping munitions, which released a white smoky substance, into a Ukrainian entrenchment before attacking two soldiers who were visibly affected.
The Kremlin has defied the convention over 4,300 times as of December 2023, in the aggression against Ukraine.
Russian sources have been publicly glorifying the success of this method in its aggression against Ukraine even though prohibited.
The Russian Federation has a long track record of using chemical weapons. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that a nerve agent of the “Novichok” group was used to poison Alexei Navalny in Russia in August 2020.
Russian agents used a nerve agent from the same group against Julia and Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom in 2018. The use of a “Novichok” nerve agent in this case was also confirmed independently by the OPCW.
The International community has raised serious concerns regarding Russia’s assistance to Syria regarding the regime’s use of chlorine as a chemical weapon in Douma in April 2018.
In October 2024, the United Kingdom also announced sanctions against Russia’s Radiological Chemical and Biological Defense (CBR) troops and their commander Igor Kirillov, who have been sanctioned for the deployment of barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine.
Also sanctioned were two Russian Ministry of Defence laboratories for providing support for the development and deployment of these inhumane weapons for use on the frontlines.
In November last year, the Russian Federation was ousted from the 41-member, Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), putting a stop to any of its influence on the organisation.
This has come to pass, as Russia is once again seeking a slot in the Executive Council (EC) in the upcoming election during the Conference of the States Parties (CSP) which will be held in the Hague, Netherlands from November 25, 2024, to November 29, 2024.
The EC oversees the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and Russia is seeking one of the two seats up for election from the Eastern Europe Group.
The Russian Federation's sole reason for wanting to return to the OPCW Executive Council is because of its large chemical industry and its role in countering the efforts of the European Union and NATO.
However, this must not be allowed to happen, given the Russian Federation's history of the use of chemical weapons, as well as support for countries that deploy the same tactics on innocent people around the globe.
