Russia today opened a new chemical weapons disposal facility, Reuters reported (see GSN, May 23).
The facility near Leonidovka in the Penza region is set to eliminate 6,885 metric tons of VX, sarin and soman nerve agents. That material constitutes roughly 17 percent of Russia's original 40,000-metric-ton arsenal, the world's largest stockpile of chemical warfare agents.
Russia has pledged to meet its April 2012 deadline to destroy all materials banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention. Experts have questioned its ability to meet that schedule (see GSN, April 8).
"This is now the sixth chemical weapons destruction facility brought on line. Obviously, it will enhance Russia's destruction capacity to meet that deadline," said Michael Luhan, spokesman for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the monitoring body for the treaty.
Moscow to date has eliminated 10,500 metric tons of chemical warfare agents, slightly more than one-fourth of its stockpile. It expects to have destroyed a total of 18,000 metric tons by the end of this year, according to Valery Kapashin, who leads the agency that manages storage and disposal of chemical weapons.
The United States, meanwhile, "has now achieved 50 percent (chemical weapons) destruction," Luhan said. Washington has acknowledged that it would miss the 2012 deadline.
Construction of the seventh and final Russian chemical weapons destruction plant began "about 10 days ago," Luhan said. The Pochep facility is set to eliminate roughly 7,500 metric tons of sarin, soman and VX.
"Just a milligram of deadly chemical agents is enough to kill persons living in an apartment," Sergei Baranovsky, head of the environmental organization Green Cross Russia, told Reuters. "Now we still talk about thousands of [metric tons] left" (Dmitry Solovyov, Reuters/Yahoo!News, June 16).