State Department spokesman Ned Price previously said Russia “could use chemical weapons during a military operation in Ukraine.”
“We know the history of the Kremlin. It is the government that uses banned chemicals. They support a brutal regime. [сирийского президента Башара] Assad, who uses banned chemicals against his citizens. So we know what this government is capable of,” he said.
Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, replied, “The Americans didn’t bother to present a single piece of evidence, it’s just another attempt to demonize our country.”
Earlier, The New York Times, citing its sources, announced that the White House had assembled a team that developed scenarios for the response should Russia resort to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, said that the country does not need the use of chemical or biological weapons. He stressed that the charges against the Russian Federation regarding its possible use are “unimaginable and worthless”.
“The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling and Disposal of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons was signed in 1972. Now 183 state participants. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Storage and Use of Chemical Weapons and their Destruction was signed in 1997. Currently 190 country participants, Myanmar and Israel have not ratified, Angola, North Korea, Egypt and South Sudan have not signed,” said Vitaly Maltsev, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, retired colonel, former employee of the Federal Directorate for Safe Storage and Disposal of Chemical Weapons (FUBKHUKHO).
Maltsev recalled that it was Russia that once initiated the signing of a convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons.
“According to this convention, Russia has eliminated chemical weapons. We do not have – this is the real situation, ”the military chemist Leonid Rink tells socialbites.ca, an expert of the State Duma Defense Committee, one of the creators of the Novichok poisoning system.
The scientist recalled that before the destruction of chemical weapons, 40,000 tons of chemical warfare agents were stored in seven arsenals on the territory of Russia. Their destruction took place in four stages.
“In April 2003, at the end of the first phase of the federal target program “Destruction of stockpiles of chemical weapons in the Russian Federation”, 400 tons of toxic substances were destroyed. In the second phase, 8,000 tons of toxic substances were destroyed in April 2007. In November 2009, another 18,000 tons were destroyed. The final phase of the elimination of chemical weapons took place in 2017 – all 40,000 tons were destroyed. The United States has dropped about 25 percent of its chemical weapons, that’s a lot and these are the most modern substances,” he said.
In turn, Vitaly Maltsev noted that to date, only four countries that have them have completely destroyed their stockpiles of chemical weapons. According to him, this list includes Albania, South Korea, India and Russia.
“The Americans have promised many times to destroy their chemical weapons. But each time the end date was delayed. They have promised to destroy all their chemical weapons by 2023, before that by 2019 or even 2015. Russia has the opposite. We were supposed to destroy weapons in 2020, but we destroyed them already in 2017. This happened in Udmurt Kizner – under the television cameras, almost live. Since then we have no weapons. Then everyone applauded us, both at the UN and in Europe. Therefore, today the United States can still carry out a chemical attack, while Russia is no longer,” Maltsev concluded.
Source: Gazeta
