DISINFO: Russia has destroyed its chemical weapons arsenal while the US has not
SUMMARY
Russia is following fully its commitments in the framework of the Convention for Chemical Weapons (CWC) and destroyed its chemical stockpile in 2017, while the United States has not done so.
RESPONSE
A recurrent pro-Kremlin narrative claiming that Russia shut down all its chemical weapons programmes.
In September 2017, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) did in fact confirm the destruction of the 39,967 tonnes of chemical weapons possessed by Russia. However, in the following years, it has become clear that Russia still maintained a chemical weapons programme. The most prominent signals for these assumptions came after the Skripal poisoning in 2018 and the Navalny poisoning in 2020. Both cases involved Novichok, a nerve agent which was declared to the OPCW and included in the Chemical Weapons Convention only in 2019.
Read similar cases in our database claiming that the west fabricated the Navalny poisoning story; or that Russia is ready to investigate the alleged use of Novichok; or that Russia destroyed its Novichok stockpile, but the US continues to produce it, or even that OPCW reports are made from the information provided by terrorists.