Gas masks can protect Ukraine's armed forces - and the UK must lead the way

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former commanding officer the UK's Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, says UK-made gas masks could make a difference for Ukraine as it reports Russia has carried out thousands of chemical weapons attacks.

The Ukrainian government has submitted a report to the United Nations watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), detailing more than 3,000 uses of chemical weapons by the Russians against its forces.

This is illegal under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Geneva Conventions, and is yet another war crime committed by the already indicted war criminal Vladimir Putin.

This must also be a marker for the newly announced Strategic Defence Review, as UK defence capability in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons has been paid lip service since the end of the 'last' Cold War.

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When the US and UK finally realised that the Assad regime, a puppet of the Kremlin, was using chemical weapons, after other people and I had gathered evidence for years behind the lines in Syria, they destroyed Syrian chemical weapons with precision airstrikes.

We discovered a few hundred uses in Syria. I, along with Jimmy Rushton, a journalist working for the Telegraph, am aware of thousands of uses, as also detailed in the report to the OPCW in Ukraine.

The main chemical weapon being used by Russia, Chloropicrin, may be at the lower end of toxicity of these weapons, being an incapacitant rather than always lethal like nerve agents, but it is still a proscribed chemical weapon under the 'Rules of War'.

We also know that Russia has an extant chemical weapons programme and has developed - and is probably still developing - a group of fourth-generation nerve agents called Novichoks, used by Russia to attack my home town of Salisbury.

These agents are many thousands of times more toxic than Chloropicrin, and if used by the Russians in Ukraine could kill thousands, if not millions, of people.

The Russian use of chemical weapons is straight out of their doctrine and tactical handbooks.

First, they have a conventional bombardment of the frontline trenches to force people underground, then they drop chemical weapons on those trenches.

The Ukrainian soldiers either have old Soviet gas masks, which do not work, or none at all - which means they have to get out of the trenches where they are shot by advancing Russian troops.

This is the only way Russia can make progress at the moment, but the answer to stop it is simple.

Our new Government has a huge opportunity to give a significant tactical advantage to Ukraine by gifting gas masks. 

The UK is by far the biggest and best manufacturer of gas masks on the planet. We provide all the masks for the US and UK forces, and most of Nato.

I understand we could probably supply all the 350,000 the Ukrainian army needs in about four months - and pretty much immediately to the frontlines under chemical attack.

If we do not enable Ukraine to prevail, we will have to put British and Nato boots on the ground, and we have just learnt that Russia lost 70,000 men in the last few weeks, which is similar to the current size of the British Army.

It is not always the obvious that makes the difference on the battlefield, but a few million pounds spent on gas masks could prove more effective than billions on bombs and bullets.

This war is showing us that reconstituting a force, especially training, is virtually impossible when you are always in contact.

Preserving combat power to fight another day is a lesson we are relearning, and we ignore it at our peril!

Gas masks will protect Ukraine's combat power when it needs it most. Ukraine must not have to follow the Russians by condemning thousands to death on the frontline for virtually no gain.

The UK's newly launched Strategic Defence Review must learn many things from Ukraine, including CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) defence. Not just chemical weapons, but also bioweapons.

Post-Covid, and with the revolution in synthetic biology, the ability to create weapons to kill thousands is potentially in the hands of every dictator, despot or rogue state who would do us harm, and there are plenty of them.

But defence against these weapons is possible - and must not be ignored in the new review.