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All Russian CW Disposal Sites to Be Working by 2009
All planned Russian chemical weapons destruction facilities are expected to be operational by 2009, Viktor Kholstov, deputy chairman of the country’s Federal Industry Agency, said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 3). “In 2009 all seven sites needed in Russia to destroy chemical weapons within the relevant international convention will start to operate,” Kholstov said during a press conference in Moscow. Work at Russia’s first disposal site, at Gorny, expected to end this year, according to ITAR-Tass. “The second facility will be put into operation before the end of the year in the settlement of Kambarka (Udmurtia),” Kholstov said. A third facility is expected to begin operations by mid-2006 in the Kirov region, followed by plants in the Kurgan, Bryansk and Penza regions in 2008 and another site in the Udmurtia region in 2009, he said. Kholstov said 1,000 of Russia’s 40,000 tons of chemical weapons have been eliminated to date. “In 2007, within the framework of the second stage of implementing the [Chemical Weapons Convention], Russia should destroy 8,000 tons of chemical weapons, about 20 percent of the amount accumulated,” he added (ITAR-Tass, Nov. 3). Kholstov also said that foreign investors should finance roughly 30 percent of Russia’s chemical weapons disposal work. A press release circulated at the press conference said, “As of 1 June 2005, the declared sum of aid by foreign sponsors of the program equaled about $1.73 billion, but only a little over $311 million were received for the implementation of specific projects” (Interfax, Nov. 3).
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