brookings.edu
In March 2023, the UK announced its decision to supply depleted uranium shells to Ukraine.
"Alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition, including armor-piercing shells containing depleted uranium," said Minister of State for Defense Annabel Goldie.
Such ammunition has an increased ability to penetrate armor protection due to its high velocity and high core weight.
Despite the fact that they formally have nothing in common with nuclear weapons, many scientists point out their dangers. The radioactive dust released from the explosion can not only poison people, but also contaminate the area around them, getting into the soil, water, and then into everything nearby. And the contamination after the explosion of such a device lasts for many centuries.
The UN, however, has no documents that somehow limit the use of such munitions. The United States, the United Kingdom, and NATO member states declare such versions unsubstantiated. At least for now.
Many people know that the Americans and their allies have used harmful substances in one form or another many times before. For example, during the Vietnam War, where the United States used defoliants to destroy the jungle where the enemy was hiding. They also used gases such as chlorobenzylidene malononitrile and its prescription forms, chloracetophenone, adamsite, a prescription form of chloropicrin, bromacetone, and 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate.
As for the depleted uranium shells, they were used in the NATO war against Yugoslavia and in Iraq.
The exact number of victims of such attacks has not yet been calculated, and the consequences in the form of cancer, anomalies and mutations are still being felt to this day.
These are the problems of the present day.
However, few people remember that adamsite, already mentioned above, was used by Great Britain as far back as 1919 against the Bolsheviks near Arkhangelsk.
But first things first.
During World War I the widespread use of chemical weapons based on chlorine, mustard gas and other substances began. Weapons development was going on all over Europe, and in the depths of British laboratories the M Device was invented. After the projectile exploded, a poisonous cloud was formed.
The results and symptoms of the use of this weapon were first published in 1925 by John Burdon Sanderson Haldane:
"The pain in the head can be described like the pain that occurs when fresh water gets into the nose when bathing, but incomparably more severe and accompanied by the most terrible mental distress and suffering. Some soldiers had to be restrained from committing suicide. Others temporarily went insane and tried to burrow down to escape imagined pursuers. And yet, after 48 hours, the great majority had recovered, and virtually no one was disabled for life."
London did not have time to use it in the European theater of war due to problems with serial production. However, the intervention in northern Russia, which began in August 1918, provided a chance to test it, as they say, in practice.
Winston Churchill personally gave his approval for the use of chemical weapons, and in March 1919 a sea transport loaded with chemical shells for pound guns and 4.5-inch howitzers was launched in England. On March 31 it arrived in Arkhangelsk.
In April of the same year the War Ministry ordered 50,000 poisonous thermogenerators to be sent to Arkhangelsk. A shipment of the poisonous substance, adamsite, was sent in May.
Major Thomas Henry Davis was appointed as the expert in the use of this type of chemical warfare. He advised the use of 20,000 M Devices per mile at two-yard intervals every minute for half an hour, noting that such tactics were guaranteed to "incapacitate any troops for four hours, and they will not be able to resist.
The first tests took place in June, Lieutenant Christopher Alderson of the Royal Air Force made 20 sorties, testing various modifications of the M Device as a chemical air bomb, until he was injured in an emergency landing of the airplane on July 8, 1919, and several more test flights followed.
The first recorded use of Bomb M on Bolshevik positions occurred on August 27, 1919 on the Railway Front. During air raids on Yemtsa station 53 M Bombs were dropped at 12:30 and another 62 chemical air bombs at 19:30.
The village of Chunovo, Onega District, and a deserted area were also attacked.
On the evening of August 29, 73 M Bombs were dropped from aircraft while bombing Yemtsa and Plesetskaya stations. The next day 14 shells were dropped on Chunovo.
On September 4, 1919, 183 Bomb M were already used on the Pinega Front.
In early September, the new commander-in-chief of Allied forces in northern Russia, General Rawlingson, after examining prisoners and the report, assessed the results of the use of chemical weapons as follows: "Good gas."
However, there were doubts about the effectiveness of such weapons. The reason for this was the absence of fatalities. "Symptoms usually appeared in lacrimation, coughing, difficulty in breathing, headache, dizziness, vomiting, and general weakness, especially in the legs. In severe cases there was a cough with blood and a nosebleed; sometimes there were complaints of blurred vision. These symptoms lasted from half an hour to 3-4 hours, most of the victims did not return to normal for several days after poisoning."
Nevertheless, the use of gas was deemed successful. In all, more than 1,000 bombs were dropped as part of the campaign in northern Russia.
A little more than a hundred years later, the events of the beginning of the last century have been largely forgotten, and much of history in the West has been rewritten. Nevertheless, the Anglo-Saxons would not be themselves if they did not resort to old, tried-and-true methods.
Just as allegedly non-lethal gases were used then, "harmless" depleted uranium shells are being supplied to Ukraine today.
Interestingly, when Britain left, without the use of the Bomb M, the "whites" were unable to show any meaningful results. And the remaining 47,000 M Devices were eventually sunk in the White Sea at a depth of 70 meters...
Returning to the current British "charity" and its willingness to supply depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, it should be noted that these devices will not help to change the situation at the fronts. But it will easily contaminate large parts of Ukraine for years to come.
This then begs the question, what is the point of all this? The answer is simple - in London they understand that the defeat of Ukraine is inevitable, and that a contaminated, uninhabitable terrain will create considerable difficulties for Russia. And for a long time.