The United States accused Russia on Wednesday of breaching a global chemical weapons ban by deploying the choking agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops.
The State Department also accused Russia of using riot control agents "as a method of warfare" in Ukraine.
"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 in a statement.
Additionally, Russian forces have used grenades loaded with CS and CN gases, according to the Ukrainian military. It said at least 500 Ukrainian soldiers have been treated for exposure to toxic substances, and one was killed by suffocating on tear gas.
The accusation came the same day a Russian ballistic missile attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa killed five people, local officials say.
A guided bomb attack killed two civilians, including a 38-year-old woman and her father, Kharkiv regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Russian shelling also killed a 67-year-old woman in the Kharkiv region in the village of Lelyukivka.
At least 13 people, including an 11-year-old child, were wounded, the governor said.
He said that "two guided aerial bombs hit the center of the town of Zolochiv" Wednesday morning, about 15 kilometers from the Russian border.
Governor Oleh Kiper said there also was damage to civil infrastructure from the attack, the second deadly round of strikes to hit Odesa in as many days.
Regional Governor Vadym Filashkin posted photos on the Telegram messaging app that showed private houses destroyed by fires and damaged by blast waves. Russian troops used a multiple rocket launcher for the strike, he said in the post.
Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday that it thwarted Ukrainian drone attacks targeting several Russian regions.
The ministry said its air defenses destroyed three drones over the Voronezh region and one drone each over the Belgorod, Kursk and Ryazan regions.
Aleksandr Gusev, the governor of Voronezh, reported that falling debris from a drone damaged a house, but he said there were no injuries.
Kyiv troops are desperately waiting for a delivery of weapons and ammunition that have been delayed for months because of political wrangling in the U.S. Congress.
"We need a significant speed-up of deliveries to strengthen the capabilities of our soldiers tangibly," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday. "It is not Russian air bombs and assault operations that should dominate the front line, but our Ukrainian initiative — our air defense, our artillery, our drones."
Zelenskyy said what Ukraine is "really counting on" is "the promptness of the U.S. deliveries" that should be "felt in the destroyed logistics of the occupiers, in their fear to deploy in any part of the occupied territory ... everywhere where Russia is pushing and where we have to push it back. And also, everywhere where new strike threats may arise."
The U.S. has pledged to speed deliveries after lawmakers approved $61 billion in new aid for Ukraine that had been stalled for months.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
