ECOLOGY / SECURITY
1. BURIED CHEMICAL WEAPONS - RAS 13, JRL 6571
SOURCE. L. A. Fyodorov, Gde v Rossii iskat' zakopannoe khimicheskoe oruzhie? (khimicheskoe razoruzhenie po-russki) [Where in Russia to Look for Buried Chemical Weapons? (Chemical Disarmament Russian-Style] (Moscow: International Socio-Ecological Union, 2002)
The Western powers are urging Russia to speed up the destruction of its stockpile of chemical and nuclear weapons, and have pledged to spend at least $20 billion over the next 10 years in support of the destruction program. They are concerned that nuclear and chemical materials may end up in the hands of terrorists or rogue states.
Russia's declared stocks of chemical weapons (CWs) amount to 40,000 tons, including two million artillery shells containing nerve gas at one facility alone. These stocks have been gathered at seven storage sites in six provinces. Facilities for destroying mustard gas and lewisite have been constructed at Gorny in Saratov province. Russia has proposed extending the deadline for eliminating the declared CW stocks from 2007 to 2012. (1)
However, it is often forgotten that DECLARED CW stocks are only one part of the problem. The other part is the old and still UNDECLARED CWs that have been buried in the earth, deposited underground in mines or caves, submerged in lakes, or simply abandoned somewhere and forgotten. These old CWs are the subject of this book by Lev Fyodorov, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, president of the Union "For Chemical Security," and co-chair of the council of the Social-Ecological Union.
The multilateral Convention for destroying CWs and banning their production, accumulation, and use was signed by Russian minister of foreign affairs Kozyrev in Paris on January 13, 1993. It envisages not only the destruction of CW stocks and production facilities but also "a solution of the problem of old CWs."
In the Convention "old CWs" are defined as:
(a) CWs produced before 1925, or
(b) CWs produced between 1925 and 1946 that have deteriorated to such an extent that they can no longer be used as CWs.
Here I'd like to enter a caveat. Old CWs may no longer be useable as weapons in the mode originally intended, but much of the highly toxic material they contain might still be put to very effective use by terrorists -- in the same way that terrorists who cannot make nuclear bombs can release radioactive material into the environment by means of "dirty bombs" that use conventional explosives. Imagine a kilogram or two of arsenic dropped into a city's water supply, and bear in mind that there are tons of the stuff strewn around Russia.
Of course, the immediate threat is to the lives and health of people and animals living in places where CWs lie buried. Old CWs are the most plausible explanation for the mysterious poisonings that are reported from time to time in the Russian press.
The author traces the fruitless attempts that have been undertaken at various times in the 1990s by Russian parliamentarians (both in the old Supreme Soviet and in the new State Duma) and by the interdepartmental commission of the Security Council on ecological security (chaired by the eminent ecologist A. V. Yablokov) to obtain information on old CWs and to persuade the government to get to serious grips with the issue. Prime minister Yegor Gaidar gave some support to these efforts in 1992, while his successor Viktor Chernomyrdin took the opposite tack, decreeing in March 1993 that the locations of old CWs were to be considered state secrets.
But the main obstacle has always been the Ministry of Defense, which has steadfastly refused to provide information or otherwise cooperate. Apparently the generals are concerned to avoid the trouble and expense of the clean-up job that could eventually be foisted on them.
On February 5, 2001, the Russian government reconstituted the special committee that oversees the fulfillment of Russia's obligations under the international conventions on chemical and biological weapons. In the process the problem of the old CWs was removed from the committee's remit. And so the issue of buried CWs has itself been buried -- or so Putin and his generals no doubt hope.
So where are old CWs buried? Over half the book is devoted to the results of Dr. Fyodorov's investigation of this matter. He gathers data not only on the burial or submersion of chemical munitions and containers full of toxic substances, but also on the burial of effluents from CW production, the loss of CWs at shooting ranges and test sites, and the abandonment of CWs by units hastily retreating before the German advance in 1941. His search focuses mainly on the regions where preparation for chemical warfare in the interwar period was especially intensive:
-- Moscow city and province;
-- St. Petersburg (Leningrad) and Leningrad province;
-- Nizhny Novgorod province;
-- Saratov province;
-- Eastern Siberia and the Far East, where preparations were made for war with Japan. (2)
In addition, he examines a sample of 13 other provinces in which chemical warfare preparations were less intensive.
Detailed information is presented about burial of CWs at 38 locations:
* 6 military storage sites specifically for CWs
* 10 military storage sites for artillery
* 8 test sites for CWs and artillery
* 3 military camps
* 3 institutes and laboratories working on CWs
* 8 burial sites for effluent at CW factories
However, the author was able to gain access to only a small proportion of the relevant army documents, such as reports on the execution of an order concerning burial of CWs that was issued by people's commissar of defense Voroshilov on 1/24/1938. He identifies a further 501 locations at which he believes the burial of CWs "could not but have occurred" -- i.e., 235 large storage sites plus 266 test sites for CWs, artillery, aviation, and tanks, shooting ranges, and military camps. This does not include a large number of other locations at which the burial of CWs "may have occurred."
"The chemical weaponry forgotten, lost, or buried by the Soviet military," Dr. Fyodorov concludes, "is just as dangerous as that which awaits destruction at the declared seven CW arsenals."
NOTES
(1) See p. 7 of the source and Associated Press and ITAR-TASS reports reproduced in Russian Environmental Digest, 7-13 October 2002, Vol. 4, No. 41. Ton refers to metric ton. The question of biological weapons is not considered in this article.
(2) Specifically: Primorye [Maritime] and Khabarovsk territories, Amur and Chita provinces, and the Jewish autonomous province [Birobijan].
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