Russia Is Testing Live Ammunition And Unknown Chemicals On Its Military Personnel

• 14.04.2026, 7:51

It has become known who is conducting the experiments and how.

The Russian Research Institute of Military Medicine of the Ministry of Defense is testing military supplies and pharmacological agents on volunteer soldiers

According to RBC-Ukraine citing Russian media.

Who and how conducts experiments

The institute is the only institution of the Russian Defense Ministry, which since 2015 has the right to conduct research on humans. The director of the institute, Sergei Chepur, told about this in his 2019 article.

He said that the tested medical drugs can affect "higher nervous activity", so experiments on animals are not enough - they attract "healthy volunteer military personnel".

What is being tested

The testing program includes:

new weapons, equipment and outfits;

evaluation of the defeat effect of new ammunition;

means of pharmacological support and correction of the state of the military (in particular, drugs to improve performance);

means of protection against extreme and defeat factors.

Tests of artillery shells

In April 2023, at a conference in St. Petersburg, Chepur said that artillery shells were tested on volunteers to determine the type and power needed to "destroy or disable the enemy's manpower."

The range simulated Russian and NATO fortifications. The test subjects were examined directly on the range for the state of the cardiovascular system, samples were taken and the dependence of body disorders on the distance to the explosion from 122 mm and 300 mm caliber cannons was determined.

Health consequences

During the tests, the volunteers had critical problems with blood pressure, changes in the vascular and nervous systems, depression of sensory and logical functions.

The conference materials note that this will make it possible "to use the munitions for suppressing the enemy's manpower with guaranteed damage not less than the average level of severity".