Russia Alerts that U.S. Endangers Chemical Weapons Agreements

Russia’s foreign ministry has stressed today that it has complied with the elimination of chemical weapons, while the United States has maintained an irresponsible attitude towards agreements to control them.

According to a communiqué, Moscow concluded in September 2017, under strict international control, the destruction of these weapons, more than two years ahead of schedule, while Washington called for an extension and’still maintains significant stocks of toxic military substances’.

The text reiterated Russia’s rejection to the US government’s announcement of new sanctions on the Eurasian nation based on the unfounded accusation of the alleged use last March of a chemical to try to eliminate a former Russian double agent resident in the UK.

On August 8, the White House issued an ultimatum against the Kremlin giving a three-month deadline to allow inspections on its territory by UN experts and demanding assurances that it would not ‘reuse’ chemical weapons, assuming that Russia is responsible for the attack. In response to this ‘unfriendly new step by Washington’, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that her country will prepare a countermeasures package and recalled that the threats and pressures against her country are ‘useless and without prospects’.

Last Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that ‘everyone who knows, even a little bit about the so-called Skripal case (after the former spy’s surname), understands the absurdity of the State Department’s official statement indicating that the United States has found Russia guilty of the incident’, which is totally false.

Russia’s certification of the destruction of the chemical weapons stockpile was achieved after a process during which Moscow did not close its facilities to accredited inspectors, who ‘visited everything they wanted to visit,’ until concluding that the disarmament was complete, Lavrov added.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s note states that the Russian Foreign Ministry always shows practical respect in the fulfillment of its international obligations and considers, in relation to the US position, that ‘any attempt to call into question this fact is unacceptable and intolerable’.