Use Of White Phosphorus Bombs In The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

During the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia used white phosphorus bombs in the battles for Kyiv and Kramatorsk in March, against defenders at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol in May, and in many different locations over the 2022 Christmas holiday. In turn, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the armed forces of Ukraine used phosphorus ammunition in the defense of the Hostomel airfield at the end of February.

Independent experts interviewed by the media stated that there was a lack of data to unequivocally establish the type of ammunition used.

Regulation and application

Incendiary ammunition is prohibited by the Geneva Convention, the provisions of which are binding on all countries involved in military conflicts. But because white phosphorus has legal uses, shells filled with it are not directly prohibited by international humanitarian law. Experts consider them not as incendiary, but as masking, since their main goal is to create a smoke screen.

White phosphorus ignites when interacting with oxygen, releasing a large amount of smoke during combustion. The military can use the curtain to mask troop movements. However, the chemical characteristics of the substance make phosphorus bombs especially dangerous: the burning temperature of phosphorus is 800–2500 °C; it sticks to various surfaces, including skin and clothes; the burning substance is difficult to extinguish. White phosphorus can cause deep burns down to the bones, and remnants of the substance in the tissues can ignite again after the initial treatment. It is difficult for military doctors, who are usually limited by medical resources, to provide timely and full assistance to the victims. Even burn survivors can die from organ failure due to the toxicity of white phosphorus. In addition, fires caused by incendiary projectiles can destroy civilian buildings and property, and damage crops and livestock. Humanitarian organizations such as Human Rights Watch are calling on governments to include phosphorus warheads under the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

Despite the danger, for 2022 the Chemical Weapons Convention did not classify phosphorus bombs as such. Non-governmental international organizations have recorded their use during military conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, the Gaza Strip, and other war zones. However, the use of phosphorus bombs near populated areas or civilians is still a war crime, as humanitarian law requires military attacks to be selective. The command is obliged to distinguish between civilians and soldiers, as well as civilian and military objects, which is impossible when using such projectiles in populated areas.

During the 2022 Russian invasion

On March 25, 2022, in an address to NATO leaders, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russian military of using phosphorus shells against civilians: "This morning, by the way, phosphorus bombs were used. Russian phosphorus bombs. Adults were killed again, children were killed again".
At the end of the month, the deputy head of the Kyiv police reported about the shelling of Kramatorsk with incendiary shells with phosphorus. And in the media there were photos showing characteristic flashes over Kyiv. Although at that time the fact of the use of phosphorus shells was not confirmed by independent organizations, experts admitted such a possibility. The active Ukrainian resistance and the poor progress of the offensive
may have prompted the Russian authorities to use dangerous weapons.

Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Anna Malyar said that the government has begun checking on incoming information about the possible use of chemical weapons, to which she includes phosphorus bombs in particular, during the blockade of Mariupol. The head of the administration of the Donetsk region and Ukrainian politician Pavlo Kirilenko confirmed that he had seen reports that an unknown explosive device was dropped by a drone in the vicinity of the Mariupol metallurgical plant, three people felt ill and were hospitalized. Russian-backed DPR forces have denied the use of banned weapons in Mariupol.

In mid-May, Ombudsman for Human Rights in Ukraine Lyudmila Denisova.
At that time, a number of civilians who had previously taken refuge at the plant were evacuated with the support of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN. Nevertheless, about a thousand Ukrainian soldiers remained on the territory, and Russian forces blocked all evacuation routes from Mariupol.

Western experts disagreed whether the shelling of Azovstal was a fact of using phosphorus ammunition or conventional 9M22S thermite shells based on magnesium alloy. The Russian command did not comment on which weapon was used for the attack. The Russian media suggested that the Azovstal video showed Grad projectiles with pyrotechnic filler, and not phosphorus bombs.

Indian Defence View and Samir, an open-source intelligence analyst explain that they probably used 9M22S incendiary shells developed by NPO Splav in 1971 based on 9M22 high-explosive fragmentation ammunition. Instead of a high-explosive fragmentation warhead, the 9M22S rocket carries a 9N510 warhead containing 180 separate incendiary elements. Designed to ignite vegetation, storage facilities, or fuel, these incendiary elements consist of hexagonal prisms made from a magnesium alloy known as ML5 filled with a thermite-like pyrotechnic composition. Each element has a nominal length of 40 mm and a width of 25 mm and a burning time of at least 2 minutes. It is also noted that the effect of these incendiary, as well as conventional lighting munitions (especially at night), outwardly often resembles the use of phosphorus munitions, but they are not.

Serhiy Haidai, the Governor of Luhansk Oblast, called the Russian attackers war criminals, comparing their actions to those of the Nazis. On May 16, the Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine launched an investigation into the possible use of incendiary weapons against the defenders of Azovstal.

See also

* War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
* Use of cluster bombs in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

References

{{2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, War crimes

2022 in Ukraine
February 2022 events in Ukraine
Military equipment of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
War crimes during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
March 2022 events in Ukraine
Massacres in Ukraine
White phosphorus
Russian war crimes in Ukraine