The toxic gas was released in an attempt to slow the Russian advance, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.
Ukrainian troops have blown up an ammonia pipeline and caused a toxic spill during their retreat in Donetsk Region on Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry has said.
The Soviet-era Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline carried the highly toxic liquefied gas from Russia to Ukraine prior to the escalation of the conflict between the two countries.
“The Ukrainian Armed Forces mined a branch of the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline,” and blew it up to slow the advance of Russian forces in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
The blast resulted “in the release of residual ammonia through the damaged section,” it added. No Russian troops were hurt as a result, the ministry said.
In a video published by the MOD, clouds of gas are seen billowing from under the ground and spreading into the surrounding countryside.
Earlier this year, Russia warned that Kiev was preparing to provoke a major ecological disaster by sabotaging a different portion of the pipeline and blaming it on Moscow.
In July, Major General Aleksey Rtishchev, the commander of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, accused international chemical weapons watchdog OPCW of ignoring Russian reports of Ukrainian violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention, but taking Kiev’s accusations at face value.
A section of the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline in Kharkov Region was blown up in 2023, injuring several civilians, in what Moscow called Ukrainian sabotage.
