President Putin orders elimination of Russia’s last batch of chemical weapons

NOVO-OGARYOVO, September 27. /TASS/. Russia has completed the elimination of its chemical weapons stock ahead of schedule and the last batch was destroyed on Wednesday following a relevant order from Russian President Vladimir Putin. President Putin issued his order during an on-line video conference with Russia’s last storage facility in Kizner, the republic of Udmurtia, where the remaining stockpile of the country’s chemical weapons had been kept and disposed of today upon the presidential order. Among the officials in Kizner present during the on-line video conference with Putin were Mikhail Babich, chairman of the government commission on chemical disarmament, and Hamid Ali Rao, the deputy director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Ali Rao called Russia’s complete elimination of chemical weapons as a milestone event in the history of the country and expressed congratulations on behalf of the OPCW to the Russian government and President Putin for his personal control and contribution in the destruction of the chemical weapons stockpile. Russia signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, commonly known as the Chemical Weapons Convention, or CWC on January 13, 1993 and ratified it on November 5, 1997. Under its international liabilities, Russia was obliged to destroy its chemical weapons stockpiles by December 31, 2018. Read more