A top Russian official has said his country will destroy all of its chemical weapons by the end of next year, a year earlier than previously announced.
Col.-Gen. Valery Kapashin, a military official in charge of storage and elimination of Russia’s chemical stockpiles, told news agencies on Thursday that the remaining weapons will have been disposed of by December 2017.
93 p.c. weapons already destroyed
As a signatory of the international Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia already has destroyed about 93 per cent of its chemical weapons, according to Russian officials. Russia had to build several plants in the past two decades to dispose of the world’s largest chemical weapons arsenal.