Russia's claim on chemical weapons destruction target "disingenuous" - paper
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
April 23, 2007
(For personal use only)

Last Friday, 20 April, in the city of Kambarka, which is 200 km from Izhevsk, capital of Udmurtia, a major event happened. Russia reported to the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW, headquarters The Hague) that it had fulfilled the second stage of the requirements of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The Russian Federation has gotten rid of 8,456 tonnes of chemical weapons - more than 20 per cent of its stockpile.

Simultaneously with the celebrations in Kambarka, where they have already destroyed 3,306 tonnes of lewisite (a blister agent), celebrations were also taking place in the settlement of Maradykovskiy in Kirov Oblast, where at that moment they were destroying the last stockpiles of VX gases - a colourless, odourless, liquid chemical nerve paralysis agent (4,006.6 tonnes, in 19,618 aviation bombs).

One of the main themes heard in the speeches of the VIP guests in Kambarka was words to the effect that Russia has fulfilled its commitments under the second stage of the convention early. It was supposed to destroy 20 per cent of all its stockpiles, which amount to 40,000 tonnes of chemical weapons - that is, 8,000 tonnes of chemical weapons of first-category danger - by 29 April 2007, the 10th anniversary of this document's entry into legal force, but it did it nine days early, by 20 April. Furthermore, it over-fulfilled the plan. Because previously, by the end of 2006, it had destroyed all its chemical weapons - 1,143.2 tonnes of yperite, lewisite, and yperite-lewisite mixtures - in the settlement of Gornyy in Saratov Oblast, where the country's first chemical weapons destruction facility was built. And then in December 2005 it commissioned a new facility in Kambarka, and in August 2006 a third chemical weapons destruction enterprise, in Maradykovskiy.

In all, as Viktor Kholstov (who is responsible, in our country, for the safe destruction of chemical weapons) told Nezavisimaya Gazeta's commentator, by the 10th anniversary of the convention Russia had totally destroyed more than 300,000 items of unloaded munitions and devices for the use of chemical weapons. Including detonators. In addition, it had gotten rid of chemical weapons of second-category danger - artillery munitions loaded with phosgene. It had carried out the physical destruction of eight enterprises where such weapons were made, and converted production facilities at 16 more such facilities.

But it is slightly disingenuous to talk about Russia's achievements along the path of destroying its chemical weapons stockpiles, which, incidentally, are the biggest in the world (in second place is the United States with 27,000 tonnes). The point is that by 29 April this year, according to the convention's requirements, we were supposed to destroy not 20 per cent of the stockpiles, but absolutely all the chemical weapons. It did not happen. Why not? This was explained in some detail in Nezavisimaya Gazeta No 81 for 19 April 2007.

Now our country has to eliminate 45 per cent of its stockpiles by 29 April 2009, and to get rid of all chemical weapons completely by the same date in 2012. Unlike in past years, the money for this does exist, if not in full. The construction of new facilities is under way at chemical weapons storage sites: in Leonidovka in Penza Oblast (the enterprise is due to be commissioned in December), Kizner (Udmurtia), Shchuchye in Kurgan Oblast, and Pochep in Bryansk Oblast. In these places they will have to destroy chemical weapons that are more toxic and more dangerous than yperite and lewisite - nerve paralysis agents: sarin, soman, and VX gases.