"Goodbye, chemical weapons" is what is said on the missile, deactivated in the Udmurt Republic today. It was the last of the chemical weapons, stored in Russia. Vladimir Putin gave the orders to destroy it via teleconference.
- Mr. Commander-in-Chief, we are ready to destroy the last missile with VX. Allow us to proceed with the destruction.
- Allowed.
- Proceed with the destruction.
Russia signed the Convention on Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 1993. They started working on it 9 years later. About 40,000 tons of venomous substances have been destroyed since then. It included sarin, GD gas, VX, mustard agent, and L-gas. We had this arsenal since the Soviet times.
According to experts, this volume would be enough to completely destroy everything on Earth several times. To deactivate chemical weapons, 7 factories were built. Two in the Udmurt Republic, and one in Saratov, Kurgan, Bryansk, Kirov, and Penza oblasts each. For this program, 290 billion rubles were provided. They planned to finish by the end of next year. But they were able to complete the task sooner. Today, Vladimir Putin said he hoped US would follow Russia's example, but Washington has postponed it 3 times, and still they have no time. We'll learn the reason from Vadim Zavodchenkov.
- Vadim, hello.
- Good evening.
- Are the technologies obsolete?
- Aleksey, technologies aren't obsolete. The strategy isn't the most effective. In Russia, over 4.4 million units have been neutralized. If you put them along the Earth's equator, they would have been less than 10 meters apart. International experts called this technology a true breakthrough. Its unique peculiarity is using two stages.
During the first one, missiles and bombs were opened and basically washed out by a special agent in special reactor. Afterwards, the mass was thermally treated, the evaporation was filtered to preserve poison, the dried salts were then canned in vacuum-sealed containers.
The missile bodies were reused at the metallurgic plants. In US, they only recently came to similar technologies for industrial utilization of venomous substances. In the beginning, the US was in a more advanced position. Their chemical weapon arsenal was more than 8,000 tons less than Russia's.
By now, about 90% of venomous substances arsenal has been neutralized. For this project, US planned to build and operate 9 objects. 7 enterprises did well and no longer operate. One new plant in Colorado began working in 2015. In the beginning, they used a different technology overseas, which was more expensive, according to experts. Chemical ammunition wasn't taken apart there, they blew it up in special armored cells. After detonation, neutralizers were added to these vacuum-sealed containers, and they were mixed with venomous substances in bins.
This way was good for neutralizing small quantities. In the US, there are still about 3,000 tons of chemical weapons left to destroy, in Colorado and Kentucky. But while they're actively working on it in Colorado, in Kentucky the plant is still being built. By now, it's only 50% ready. According to Pentagon's estimates, the project will require additional investments of $2 billion. The military counts on receiving this money from the government, even though they've used up their limit to neutralize the chemical weapons. In the beginning, US authorities counted on spending about $2 billion on this project. But they've already spent $36 billion.
According to experts, the indirect reason is that neutralizing the chemical weapons was ordered to privately-owned companies. But this alone doesn't explain the delay. In our country, government-owned plants do it. They have firm prices set. They have privately-owned businesses, who can easily raise the prices tenfold. They were able to neutralize only 40% over a few years, and then the money ran out.
This just proves that they can do it, but don't want to for some reason. Either way, the remaining chemical weapons in the US will be destroyed 2 years later. They plan it for 2023, even though we can't be sure of that. Aleksey, we have a reason to believe that this date might be postponed as well.
Vadim Zavodchenkov told us how chemical weapons are destroyed, and that some people are in no hurry to do it.
