Talks on substance: Moscow ready for dialog with US on chemical weapons
Moscow is ready for talks with the new US administration on the use of chemical warfare agents in Ukraine, the Russian post mission to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has told Izvestiya. Russia has handed over all information about the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine supplied to Kiev by Washington under Joe Biden. After the change of power in the United States, the American delegation to the OPCW is in no hurry to make contact with the Russian side. But the experience of Trump's first presidency gives hope for the resumption of dialog between Moscow and Washington in the sphere of chemical weapons control.
The United States supplies Ukraine with chemical weapons
Russia is ready to discuss with the United States the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. Nevertheless, after the change of administration in the White House, representatives of the United States and other Western countries have not been in contact with the Russian delegation to the OPCW, the Russian post mission to the organization told Izvestia.
- We have repeatedly stressed that the Russian Federation is always open for professional dialogue on all issues on the organization's agenda. However, the US representatives in The Hague, as well as on other international platforms, are not yet set on concrete cooperation with Russia. As soon as our American colleagues are ready, we will be able to resume our interaction on an equal professional and depoliticized basis," the diplomats said.
They recalled that since February 2022, the United States and its satellites have unilaterally stopped all interaction at the bilateral level with the Russian post mission to the OPCW.
The Russian side continues to disseminate among all States parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons evidence of the use by the Ukrainian armed forces of various types of toxic chemicals against civilians, Russian officials and military personnel.
- Washington is well aware of Ukraine's flagrant violations of the Convention. At the same time, the United States demonstratively ignores them. Moreover, they are making every possible effort to cover up the crimes of the Kyiv regime. Our data, which have been verified and confirmed by the OPCW-certified laboratory of the Russian Ministry of Defence, are cynically referred to as disinformation. In this, the Americans are echoed by their Euro-Atlantic allies," the post mission added.
The issue of the use of chemical weapons remains a sensitive topic for Ukraine and its sponsors. This was confirmed by the murder of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, on December 17 last year. Despite the fact that Ukraine has not officially claimed responsibility for the crime, the Western media wrote, citing sources, that Ukrainian special services were behind it.
A couple of months before his death, Igor Kirillov reported that during the time of the SVO, the Russian military had recorded more than 400 cases of the use of chemical weapons by the AFU. Among the substances were chloropicrin, "Bi-Zet", hydrocyanic acid, as well as chlorcian.
The US remains the main supplier of toxic substances to Ukraine, the Russian post office told Izvestiya earlier. Russian diplomats informed the OPCW back in March 2023 that the US supplied the AFU with such chemicals as B-Zet, CS, and C-Ar.
Can the US refuse to supply Ukraine with chemical weapons?
Despite the fact that the U.S. delegation to the OPCW has not yet made contact with the Russian side, such steps in the future cannot be ruled out, especially given the statements of the new U.S. president about his desire to reach a deal on Ukraine. It is quite possible that the first moves will take place after the contact between the heads of state.
However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov confirmed on January 31 that there have been no shifts regarding contacts between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump so far.
Moscow, he said, is not satisfied with the situation in which U.S.-Russian relations are stagnant and continue to sink "into a quagmire of long-standing and long-unresolved problems."
But against this background, the Russian Federation is ready for dialog and discussion of "any of the most acute issues," he said.
It is logical to expect the resumption of contacts between Moscow and Washington through the OPCW, since during the first presidential term of Donald Trump they found reasons for cooperation. For example, in November 2019, Russia on the one hand and the United States, Canada and the Netherlands on the other were able to reach an agreement on updating the control lists of toxic substances from the annex to the 1993 chemical convention. In particular, the Russian Federation insisted on the inclusion of several hundred substances developed and patented in the United States as chemical weapons in the 1970s and 1980s. At the time, Russia's permanent representative to the OPCW, Alexander Shulgin, said that the denouement of the problem with the lists was a "positive moment" in relations between Moscow and Washington. "After a long period of fierce confrontation here in The Hague, on the OPCW platform, finally Russia and the United States have shown that our delegations have not yet forgotten how to negotiate," he emphasized.
The sanctions that the White House had imposed on Moscow a few months earlier over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom did not prevent them from reaching a consensus.
It was under Trump, in October 2017, that the US State Department first acknowledged that terrorists affiliated with Jebhat al-Nusra (banned in Russia) had used chemical weapons in Syria's Idlib province.
But relations between the US and Russia over the OPCW under Trump should not be idealized either. The United States, for example, has regularly accused Russia of allegedly helping Bashar al-Assad use chemical weapons against civilians in Syria. Moscow pointed to Washington's double standards in the Syrian issue: the US had not yet destroyed its stockpile of chemical munitions, unlike Russia, at that time. The Americans assure that they eventually did so in 2023. However, the Russian side believes that the disposal took place without proper verification by the OPCW. The bad faith of the US in this matter is evidenced at least by the fact that weapons made of chemical munitions from the time of Saddam Hussein, allegedly destroyed by the US and the UK in 2003-2009, then regularly "surfaced" during local conflicts in the Middle East.
In this sense, it cannot be ruled out that in Trump's second term, US-made chemical weapons will still appear in Ukraine. Chemical munitions are not on the list of weapons officially transferred to Kiev by the United States. It is possible that even in the event of a possible reduction in official military aid from Washington, the AFU will continue to secretly receive banned types of weapons.
This scenario is supported by the fact that the conflict zone remains for Kiev's Western allies not only a suitable testing ground for new weapons, but also a place to dispose of already decommissioned ammunition.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
