Russia eliminated 99% of own chemical weapons: Moscow

Russia says it has so far annihilated "99 percent of its chemical weapons" to meet the conditions specified in the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which it began implementing some 20 years ago.

Major General Valery Kapashin, the head of Russia's Federal Administration for the Safe Storage and Destruction of Chemical Weapons, announced the news, in an interview with the Interfax, published on Monday

He added that the remaining one percent, some 400 tons of weaponized chemicals, is currently kept “at the last facility in operation to store and destroy the chemical weapons, in the Kizner village in the Udmurt region."

In an attempt to meet the conditions of the CWC, Russia paved a long way since late 2002 and early 2003, when it managed to destroy the first batch of chemicals, one percent, followed by another 20 percent in 2007.

In 2009, Moscow announced that it was ahead of the planned schedule, having got rid of 45 percent of its chemical arsenal. By the end of 2014, Moscow announced that it had destroyed 84.7 percent of its air-delivered chemical munitions.

“We’re finishing Stage Four a year earlier, too, and will destroy all 100 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile by the end of 2017, not 2018,” he added.

Now, Russia meets the standards of the CWC, Kapashin further said.

In January 1993, Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the production, development, possession, sharing or use of chemical weapons. Russia ratified the convention in 1997. At the time, Moscow declared that it possessed some 40,000 tons of toxic ammunition, including nerve agents Sarin, Soman and VX-type chemical agents.

Moscow says it uses completely safe technologies to eliminate chemical weapons, and since the commencement of the elimination process 14 years ago, no single emergency situation has occurred during the processes of destroying the toxic substances.

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