Did Russia use prohibited incendiary shells to bomb Kherson?

The Russian Armed Forces added another incident to their growing list of war crimes this week when they used incendiary ammunition to bomb the city of Kherson. 

The attack took place late at night on January 8th according to Ukranian politician Yaroslav Yanushevych, the current governor of Kherson Oblast. 

"The Russian invaders attacked the Tavriiskyi neighborhood of the city,” Yanushevych wrote in a public statement on his Telegram account, “incendiary ammunition was used for the attack.”

“Fortunately, this Ruscist's attack did not result in civilian casualties or infrastructure destruction," Yanushevych added. 

In one of his now-famous nightly addresses, Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Russia’s attack on Kherson while also addressing discussing several other attacks Russian forces executed during their claimed ceasefire. 

"Russians were shelling Kherson with incendiary ammunition immediately after Christmas," Zelensky said, before moving on to point out another attack against the city of Kramatorsk. 

The use of incendiary ammunition against cities or civilian targets has been banned since the early 1980s under the United Nations Protocol on the Prohibitions or Restrictions on the use of Incendiary Weapons. 

This isn’t the first time Russian forces have used incendiary munitions to attack prohibited Ukrainian targets, throughout the course of the last eleven months there have been a number of documented incidents showing Russia’s disregard for military convention. 

In September 2022, Russian forces were filmed using incendiary ammunition to bomb the recently captured village of Ozerne in Donetsk Oblast. 

“Russian 9М22S incendiary shells falling on the recently liberated village of Ozerne in the Donetsk region,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry wrote in a tweet.

Russian forces have used 9М22S incendiary shells since at least March when videos surfaced of its use against the town of Popasna, an incident that lead many reports to mistakenly misidentify the munitions as white phosphorous.

Several incendiary attacks in March led President Volodymyr Zelensky to publically accuse Russian forces that same month of using white phosphorous in Ukraine.

“Europe is going through a war, every day of which is full of war crimes of Russian troops,” Zelensky said according to an NBC News translation. 

“This morning, I received information that Russian troops had used phosphorus bombs against civilians in Ukraine,” Zelensky added. 

No evidence was ever provided for Zelensky’s claims and experts are still divided on whether or not white phosphorus munitions have been used in Ukraine according to a Wikipedia page devoted to analyzing the subject. 

Unfortunately, the use of incendiary weapons like the against 9М22S Ukraine and civilian centers isn’t likely to stop anytime soon. 

Russia has used incendiary attacks since the very beginning of the invasion with great success in Kyiv and Mauripol, so we should expect to see more of it in the coming months.