The worst decision in his biography was not made Serhii Tarnaovsky during his civilian life as a lumber businessman, but in the war as corporal of a platoon of Ukrainian paratroopers. On a plain in Soledar, at the front, it seemed to him that his men were too exposed, and he decided that it would be safer to advance crouching in a field of sunflowers. One of the many mines with which the Russians had planted their own tore off half of his right leg. Others attacked their companions.
Ukrainian fighters have given this explosive trap various nicknames. The most widespread is “butterfly”. It is a Soviet PFM-1. Scattered by hundreds from a helicopter or by the firing of a shell, it glides until it settles on the ground. In the countryside it is easy to confuse her; They also call it “the leaf” for a reason. To his credit he has a statistic – not verifiable, like so much data from the war – according to which It is the anti-personnel mine that has caused the most cripples in these four years of war.
It is also one of the most banned weapons in the world that they wreak havoc on this conflicttactics such as suffocation with suffocating gas, the use of which, perhaps one day, investigate an international courtif by the time the war in Ukraine ends the decomposition of International Humanitarian Law allows it.
a million traps
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, the Ottawa Convention on the Ban of Anti-Personnel Minessigned by 162 states, loses signatories. They are already at the exit door Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Finlandwho wait the mandatory six months after denouncing the treaty. It is no coincidence that these five countries have a border with Russian territory, and are also part of the Europe that feels most threatened.
Ukrainians injured by landmines, in a ceremony at the Central Defense Hospital in Madrid / JOSE LUIS ROCA
The government of Volodymyr Zelensky It has also considered leaving, but the rules of the Convention do not allow a state to leave it if it is at war. For now, Ukraine partially suspends its application. Russia has it easier: it did not sign the treatynor the United States, Israel, China, India, Pakistan, Cuba or North Korea.
For the rest of the international community, this weapon has little military value, since armies have means to circumvent or neutralize them in an advance, but “they kill or They mutilate hundreds of people every week, mostly innocent and defenseless civilians and especially children.” The Ottawa Convention says so. His testimony also points out that these weapons indiscriminately take the lives of combatants and civilians, impede development, since farmers cannot return to their lands, and hinder the distribution of humanitarian aid.
It is not known for sure how many of these deadly instruments are scattered across 1,500 kilometers of the Ukrainian front. Last August, the head of planning UN mine action programme, Paul Heslopestimated that there are more than a million.
asphyxiating gas
Although their main potential is to be hidden, the use of mines in the war in Ukraine ands more obvious than that of gas. This, in fact, is one of the least reported episodes of cruelty. Its protagonist is a product that abounds in Russian arsenals.
Is called chloropicrin. He is an old acquaintance from the war, since this chemical compound was used profusely against the trenches in the first world conflagration. In peacetime, and in high concentrations, it serves as an insecticide. Inhaled by humans, it causes intense irritation. It is part of the catalog of chemical weapons and, as such, is prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention, of which Russia is a signatory country.
Ukrainian soldiers in gas masks in a defensive position. / Ministry of Defense Ukraine
Chloropicrin releases a superlative pepper spray that can be obtained from certain agricultural pesticides. With him, on the Donbas front, the Russians have tried to alleviate the impregnability of the defenses Ukrainians. Gasping, they have made the defenders go out into the open field, to annihilate them once they are deprived of the protection of their tunnels and parapets.
The Russian military has repeatedly denied resorting to this banned weapon. The Dutch and German foreign intelligence services have said the opposite; and then, the Americans. The European accusation speaks of drones dropping chloropìcrine bottles and grenades over the Ukrainian trenches.
Complaints and sanctions
On July 4, 2025, Ruben Bekelmans, Minister of Defense of the Netherlandsratified his parliament that “Russia is intensifying the use of chemical weapons”. He said this because, before chloropicrin, according to his version, the Kremlin had also released large quantities of tear gas against Ukrainians, the CSused by riot forces and of which in 2025 appeared samples in Dnipropetrovsk.
“The use of tear gas and chloropicrin by Russian troops has become normalized and common,” said Bekelmans. On May 28, 2024, it was Russia, through the Sputnik agency, that made that same accusation against Ukrainewithout gaining credibility in the West.
On May 20, 2025, the Council of the EU published a sanction against Russian entities for the use of chloropicrin and tear gas in the front. The three sanctioned entities are the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troopsthe XXVII Scientific Center of the Russian army and the XXXIII Central Institute of Scientific Research and Testing.
deaf war
A dark pulse is raging parallel to the foot-to-ground combats in Donbas and Zaporiya, and it revolves around chemical weapons. When, at six in the morning on December 17, 2024, a bomb exploded at the door of the house of the General Igor Kirillov in Moscow, he killed on the spot a popular figure in the Russian Federation. During the covid pandemic he had become famous for his television appearances.
Ukrainian military intelligence claimed responsibility for the attack, naming its target as father of the Russian chemical weapons program in this war. The situation on the front due to these gases reached such a point that lNBC-3 class filters that can be installed in gas masks were in short supply dramatically. The Ukrainian diaspora spread across Europe found in hardware stores and shops online. At Amazon, after a period of depletion, The filters have reappeared, which are sold for 65 euros.
A mutilated Ukrainian ex-combatant holds his cell phone in his artificial arm during a visit to Madrid / José Luis Roca
Chloropicrin is a substance that is little talked about. In peacetime it is a controversial product in a controversial market, that of pesticidesin which Spain is an actor despite the warnings of environmental entities and some unions.
A recent CCOO report has denounced the export from Spain in 2023 of more than 1.1 million kilos of chloropicrin (according to data from the Ministry for the ecological transition and demographic challenge) to countries where, unlike the EU, its use is not prohibited in the countryside.
Swarm explosions
At the end of 2025, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office had noted 152,012 war crimes since the invasion started in February 2022. Among them there are 3,132 cases of damage to civilians due to mines antipersonnel and 62 of havoc caused by chemical weapons.
It is more complicated to monitor, due to its numerous nature, the use of another vein of prohibited weapons: cluster bombsespecially its use in heavily attacked civilian areas.
The most consulted Western military observers have pointed out Russia’s systematic use of 9N235 ammunition. It is what fuels the cluster bombs that, in these four years, have been launched on civilian areas, lately by Geran-2 drones, but also spreading them with a missile or an aerial bomb.
The most powerful documented is the one that responds to the Soviet acronym RBK-500, whose use has been closely monitored by British intelligence. It is a tremendous weapon, which danother 268 bombs are released when they open.
There are 120 countries that have banned this so-called “saturation weapon.” Neither Russia nor Ukraine, nor the United States, which has supplied kyiv with lots for its defense, are not on the list. When the Russians manage to drop the half-ton RBK, the Daughter bombs that hit vehicles and protection can penetrate up to 12 centimeters of steel. Those that remain on the ground explode in 40 seconds. And those that fall without exploding, sometimes 40%, remain asleep like mines waiting let someone step on them.
Each of these bombs can fill an area similar to two football fields with explosions. Its use has been reported in Donetsk, in the terrible battle of Avdivka and in a place already emblematic of the Ukrainian tragedy: Bucha.
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