DISINFO: The OPCW is turning into an instrument for serving the geopolitical interests of the West
SUMMARY
At the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and at the UN Security Council, countries "tied" by Euro-Atlantic solidarity, as well as their clients and proxies, have become even more aggressive with unsubstantiated accusations against Russia of allegedly concealing part of the former military-technical programme of the USSR.
The "Skripals case" inspired by Great Britain and the alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny are brought to light again. London still has not provided any evidence of its charges. In turn, Germany, France and Sweden firmly refuse to interact with Moscow on the investigation... The once authoritative independent technical organisation OPCW is turning into an instrument for serving the geopolitical interests of a narrow group of states.
RESPONSE
Multiple unfounded pro-Kremlin disinformation messages attempting to discredit the OPCW, consistent with the claims about the poisoning of former Russian GRU officer Sergei Skripal and of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The OPCW is an independent inter-governmental international organisation with 193 member states - including Russia. The portrayal of the OPCW as a pawn in Western geopolitical designs started around mid-2018 when the organisation was being granted new powers to assign blame for chemical attacks. 18 countries issued a joint statement, which called for an end to the unacceptable defamation of the OPCW.
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.
Moscow's involvement in the poisoning of Skripals with a specific nerve agent Novichok has been proven via a thorough investigation, which was sufficient to charge two Russian nationals, Anatoliy Chepiga and Aleksandr Mishkin, both of them Russian military intelligence (GRU) who travelled to the UK using fake names and documents. In September 2021, British police charged in absentia a third Russian GRU agent, Denis Sergeev, who used the alias Sergei Fedotov. See here the EU statement on the Salisbury attack.
As for Navalny poisoning, after Germany requested its technical assistance, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), of which Russia is a member, issued a statement verifying previous statements by the German authorities and corroborating earlier independent conclusions by German, French, and Swedish laboratories.