The use of incendiary ammunition is regulated by Protocol III of the Convention on certain classic weapons, which entered into force in December 1983. According to this protocol, this type of weapons “is prohibited in all circumstances” against civilians.
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A rain of fire fell on Saturday May 14 in the morning, on the Azovstal factory, the day before the surrender of the Ukrainian soldiers besieged in the last square of the resistance of Marioupol. In a video of the scene, filmed from a probably Russian drone, we see around twenty rockets exploding successively, each freeing an orange wreath. Like a fireworks in a morning light, the sheaves densely cover a square of 500 meters side, made up of concrete, asphalt or the roofs of buildings forming the heart of the famous steel. By touching the soil, the pastilles produce a brief flash and then remain incandescent, producing white smoke, sometimes a flames.
spectacular, the video circulated on Sunday on Russian and Ukrainian social networks, especially after the adviser of the mayor of Marioupol, Piotr Andriouchtchenko, assigned his comment to it. He believes that these are “incendiary ammunition (…) perhaps white phosphorus (we will leave the conclusion to specialists). The occupants themselves affirm that these are incendiary shells 9m22c with cartridges thermite. The combustion temperature is around 2,500 degrees. It is practically impossible to stop combustion. Hell has descended on earth “. In the process, the public prosecutor’s office of Ukraine opened an investigation, arguing that “the incendiary projectiles based on thermite are prohibited by the standards of international law”.
“The laws of war, C ‘is finished “
The use of incendiary ammunition is regulated by Protocol III of the Convention on certain classic weapons, which came into force in December 1983. According to this protocol, this type of weapons “is prohibited in all circumstances” against civilian populations , but also against military targets when they are close to civilian populations. “We must not be fooled, the laws of war are over. The Russians have been sitting on it for a long time,” said Léo Péria-Peigné, a researcher in armaments at the center of security studies of the French Institute of international relationships. “We are witnessing an old -fashioned war here. The Russians have already used incendiary bombs in Kharkiv, Chernihiv and kyiv.”
For the researcher, the bombing of azovstal “perhaps aimed to suffocate people who are refugees in the underground. ‘Other part, the heat released by the pastilles is such that it enters the ground, crosses the metal and burns everything within a radius of 15 meters. We find here a classic Russian tactic aimed at creating a prohibition zone “. The incendiary bombing would have completed the effort of demoralizing Ukrainian fighters, many of which were already injured.
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