#chemical-weapons

#chemical-weapons

And that is why we have together found the evidence of this lethal toxin that was found in Alexei Navalny's body at time he died. And only the Russian regime had the motive, the means and the opportunity to administer this lethal posion while he was in prison in Russia. They wanted to silence him because he was a critic of their regime and that is why we have exposed this barbaric Kremlin plot to do so.

Five European countries the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands have accused Russia of poisoning and killing opposition leader Alexey Navalny in 2024 based on lab results from a sample taken from his body. The five governments said in a statement on Saturday that tissue samples conclusively confirmed the lethal toxin epibatidine. The poison is found in wild dart frogs from South America.

The Time reported that Russia used chemical weapons 6,540 time in 2025 and since the start of the war on 24 February 2022 they have been used more than 9,000 times. European and Ukrainian officials have said Russia has used chloropicrin which is a choking agent, this has not been used since World War I. The Time reported, "The concern, voiced quietly in allied capitals, is that a prolonged or stalemated war in Ukraine could tempt the Kremlin to resort to more dangerous battlefield weapons."

Some 182,000 Kurds living in Iraqi Kurdistan were killed in 1988 by chemical weapons launched by Saddam Hussein's regime in a series of attacks known as the Anfal campaign. That campaign included chemical attacks on Halabja, a village on the Iraq-Iran border, and other communities. Five thousand people are estimated to have died in Halabja. They were the victims of sarin and VX nerve agents, and mustard gas.

It came as a horrifying surprise early one morning in Hawaii: A bright flash lit up the dark sky over Honolulu, and on the horizon, a central cloud climbed higher and higher. "I thought at once it must be a nuclear explosion," a Diamond Head resident told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1958. "I stepped out on the lanai [or porch] and saw what must have been the reflection of the fireball. It turned from light yellow to dark yellow and from orange to red."

The novichok attack on Salisbury in south-west England in March 2018 was an extraordinary event, sending shock waves across the world. The targeted man, the former Russian agent Sergei Skripal, recovered from an audacious assassination attempt, but an innocent British citizen, Dawn Sturgess, died. An inquiry was heard in Salisbury and London last year investigating the attack on the Skripals, the response of the emergency services and other public bodies, and how Sturgess was tragically caught up in an international incident.

Russian air defences have downed dozens of Ukrainian drones in widely dispersed parts of the country, including two near the country's second-largest city, Saint Petersburg.