Russian MFA Spox Maria Zakharova’s comment on Kiev regime using and planning to use chemical weapons

The Russian Federation routinely monitors and documents cases of the Ukrainian armed formations using or planning to use in the area of the special military operation listed chemical agents, riot control agents (RCAs), and other chemicals that do not appear on the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) checklists.

Detailed information about the Kiev regime’s mass-scale use of warfare chemical agents in violation of its commitments under the CWC, as well as provocations staged by Kiev and its Western backers to falsely accuse the Russian Armed Forces of similar actions, has been regularly shared with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the UN Security Council, and the UN General Assembly since February 2022.

Despite irrefutable evidence provided by Russia, Ukrainian armed formations continue to use toxic chemicals (chlorine, ammonia, ammonium nitrate, and sulfuric acid) against Russian military units, civilians, and local administration officials. These include substances listed under CWC schedules 2 (BZ) and 3 (chloropicrin) and the RCAs.

This behaviour is enabled by political backing and approval coming from Washington, Berlin, London, and Paris.

Russian experts have documented Ukraine’s breaches of CWC provisions, as well as violations of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Ukrainian armed formations also pose an environmental threat to chemical plants in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and the Sumy, Kharkov, and Odessa regions.

The collective West has created an atmosphere of impunity that emboldens the Kiev regime as it proceeds to perpetrate larger-scale crimes involving toxic chemicals.

We have credible information that, with Western support, Ukraine plans to stage a series of anti-Russia provocations in the special military operation zone. Preparations are underway to fabricate evidence to accuse Russia of CWC violations during combat operations.

According to Russian authorities, NATO countries delivered over 70 advanced toxic chemical detection and recording devices to Ukraine between July and September, including the latest detectors and gas analysers. Simultaneously, Ukrainian security forces have been trained both in Ukraine and at NATO centres in methods of evidence falsification which were earlier used in Syria, the Skripal poisoning, and the alleged poisoning of Alexey Navalny. NATO countries, in part through the OPCW Technical Secretariat, are helping Ukraine build a “body of evidence” to further accuse Russia of CWC violations. The materials to back this up are available.

We take it that the fabricated “evidence” cooked up not far from the contact line will, as was previously done in Syria, be swiftly handed over to international experts for a so-called independent report accusing Moscow of chemical weapon use.

The motive behind this campaign is clear. No international legal standard will stop NATO countries from pursuing their stated goal of achieving a “strategic defeat” for Russia, especially when it involves chemical provocations under false flag, as used for long years in Syria.

Moreover, Ukraine’s close ties with Islamist-affiliated terrorist groups and nationalist-extremist groups in the Middle East and Africa underscore the very real threat of “chemical” terrorism coming from Ukrainian special services. We caution Washington and its allies against “playing with fire,” so as not to irreparably damage the CWC framework established in 1997.

The Russian Federation will continue to inform the international community about Kiev’s CWC violations and the actual state of affairs in the SMO zone. Russian investigative bodies have documented numerous cases of poisoning attempts on civil administration officials, the use of drones equipped with toxic substances along the contact line, and the discovery of chemical caches intended for sabotage operations in various Russian regions.

Russia will continue to document and report to CWC member states and UN members about the toxic chemicals used by Kiev’s armed forces against the Russian military and civilians, as well as about planned provocations against chemical facilities in Donbass.

Those responsible for these and other crimes against Russian citizens will be identified and face deserved and inevitable punishment.

https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1974755/