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

Summary

An RFE/RL investigation details Russia's manufacture and use of banned chemical grenades in Ukraine.
A Western-sanctioned Russian institute is making the toxic gas grenades for the war against Ukraine.
Chinese companies have supplied Russia with raw materials for white phosphorus munitions.

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.

Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Nyahu was recovering after a chemical grenade attack

"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.”

“You cry, you belch – you have all the symptoms. But you still have to shoot back," Ukrainian soldier Ihor Kozarenko said.

“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.

A Russian blogger wrote, "Meet the RG-Vo. A very effective gas grenade."

“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.

A representative of Ukraine's Center for Research on Captured and Advanced Weapons and Military Equipment, Andriy Rudyk, holds part of a Russian RG-Vo grenade

That same month marked the first time Ukraine recorded Russia’s first use of a new type of RG-Vo grenade against Ukrainian soldiers, Andriy Rudyk, a representative of the Center for Research on Captured and Advanced Weapons and Military Equipment, said at a press conference in January 2024.

Also in late 2023, a Russian pro-war blogger introduced what he suggested was a new product of the Russian military industry to his audience: “Meet the RG-Vo. A very effective gas grenade,” he wrote. Soon after that, photos of entire batches of the brand-new chemical grenades began to appear in online Russian military forums.

At least six soldiers have been killed by gas from RG-Vo grenades, according to Major Alla Asaulenko, an officer in the medical service of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In August, the Security Service of Ukraine said Kyiv had recorded more than 10,000 Russian chemical attacks since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

In July, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Russian forces “are increasingly using chemical weapons.”

“This shows that Russia wants to inflict as much pain and suffering on Ukraine as possible so that it surrenders, and this is unbearable, and that is why we are taking all these steps," Kallas said, referring to sanctions against people and organizations believed to be involved in the development and use of chemical weapons.

'An Easy Target'

But sanctions imposed by the United States, the EU, the United Kingdom, and others haven’t stopped the NIIPH from manufacturing RG-Vo grenades at a fast clip, Ukrainian officials say.

“We see that the production rate is fairly high, because these gas grenades are used in such quantities along almost the entire line of combat contact,” Colonel Artem Vlasyuk, a department head in the Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Directorate of the Ukrainian military’s Support Forces Command, told Schemes.

The Scientific Research Institute of Applied Chemistry (NIIPH) in Sergiyev Posad, Russia.

Founded in 1945, NIIPH now helps supply Russian forces with weapons for the biggest war in Europe since that year. Part of Rostec, the sprawling state military industry conglomerate, it is located in Sergiyev Posad, 70 kilometers northeast of Moscow.

The institute's website mentions only its civilian products, such as sparklers and cartridges for sport shooting and hunting. But in 2020, its then-director, Nikolai Varyonykh, told a local TV channel that the institute’s priorities were “state orders” and the “creation of the most modern weapons for the Russian Army.”

The RG-Vo grenades first used by Russian forces in Ukraine in December 2023 may be more harmful than previous versions, according to experts, including Colonel Artem Vlasyuk, a department head in the Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Directorate of the Ukrainian military’s Support Forces Command and Vitaliy Nikityuk, a department head at the Laboratory of Forensic and Military Research. They can contain toxic CS or CN gas.

“A person who receives a dose from this gas grenade becomes disoriented, loses the ability to take any action –- and becomes an easy target,” Nikityuk said.

The raft of sanctions on NIIPH include punishment meted out against it by the UK in July for supplying RG-Vo grenades to the military. However, Schemes determined that these measures didn’t hit the institute hard because it obtained components of RG-Vo grenades inside Russia, from at least two enterprises that are not sanctioned by the West -- the Saransk Mechanical Plant and Eurocheminvest.

The Saransk Mechanical Plant positions itself as a manufacturer of items such as bicycle trainers, outdoor furniture, and barbecue grills. But information obtained by Schemes from Russian tax databases shows that, in 2024, NIIPH purchased two types of pyrotechnic moderators, which help initiate the explosion of the grenade, from the plant.

Tax database information also showed that Eurocheminvest has sold two potential RG-Vo ingredients to NIIPH: Chloroform, which is used in CN gas, and acetone, which can be used in the production of CS gas. Neither Eurocheminvest nor the Saransk plant responded to requests for comment.

The China Connection

Also not under sanctions: Chinese companies from which Schemes found that NIIPH has purchased red phosphorus. The chemical is often used to make white phosphorus –- a substance that ignites upon exposure to oxygen and burns at about 800 degrees Centigrade. “Its incendiary effects inflict death or cruel injuries that result in lifelong suffering,” Human Rights Watch has written.

Ukraine and others have accused Russia of using white phosphorus munitions repeatedly in its invasion, including in its unsuccessful drive toward Kyiv and in the monthslong battles for Bakhmut and Mariupol in the Donetsk region.

According to Russian customs data, NIIPH purchased red phosphorus worth over $1 million in 2022-23 -- a total of almost 100 tons, a quarter of all imports of this substance to Russia during that period and enough to fill two freight cars.

The database information shows the red phosphorus was purchased from Yunnan Phosphorus, which it says represented the interests of another Chinese company, Dongguan Haofei. Neither company responded to requests from Schemes for comment.

US and EU sanctions have banned direct supplies to Russian defense enterprises since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since 2024, Western sanctions have also specifically prohibited exports of red phosphorus to Russia.

On The Battlefield

In addition to information about production, Schemes obtained evidence of the use of RG-Vo grenades by two Russian units fighting in Ukraine, the 114th and 136th Separate Motor Rifle Brigades.

“Here’s the gas grenade we fired,” a Russian military blogger says, pointing at a scene of soldiers’ attack, in the video shown on Telegram by RT in May 2024. “And then our storm troopers went in.”

A Russian RG-Vo grenade allegedly used to attack a Ukrainian position.

Communications this spring and summer between soldiers from the 136th brigade in the partially occupied Kharkiv region, obtained by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) through its agent networks and provided to Schemes, include written references to “gas” and specifically to RG-Vo grenades.

"Material we have received has allowed us to establish that…for six months, every day -– this is a key point, every day -- they received an order and used with varying degrees of intensity exactly this means of destruction: a chemical grenade,” an SBU investigator in the Kharkiv region said on condition of anonymity, speaking about the 136th brigade. “These are the specifics of the tactics they use during active offensive actions.”

In July, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency posted what it said was a fragment of a radio intercept in which an unidentified Russian commander in Ukraine tells subordinates of a plan to kill a group of Ukrainian soldiers sheltering in a basement.

“Now I will gas the [expletive] in the basement,” the voice says. “If I can’t do it [myself], finish them off after the gas, while they’re [expletive] coughing with snot and spit and can’t see a [expletive] thing -– they’ll have to be finished off quickly after that.”