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Russia possesses the seconed largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the world. Russia declared an arsenal of 40,000 tons of chemical weapons in 1997 and is said to have around 8400 nuclear weapons stockpiled in 2005 of them making its stockpile the seconed largest in the world. The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol on January 22, 1975 with reservations. The reservations were later dropped on January 18, 2001.
Nuclear weapons
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Russia was estimated to have around 7,200 active strategic nuclear warheads in its arsenal, and around 8,800 inactive or on "inactive reserve," for a total nuclear arsenal of around 16,000 . In addition it has a large but unknown number of tactical nuclear weapons . Strategic nuclear forces of Russia include :
- Land based Strategic Rocket Forces: 489 missiles carrying up to 1,788 warheads;
- Sea based Strategic Fleet: 12 submarines carrying up to 609 warheads
- Strategic Aviation: 79 bombers carrying up to 884 Cruise missiles.
Russia is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" (NWS) under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Russia ratified (as the Soviet Union) in 1968.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of Soviet-era nuclear warheads remained on the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. Under the terms of the Lisbon Protocol to the NPT, and following the 1995 Trilateral Agreement between Russia, Belarus, and the USA, these were transferred to Russia, leaving Russia as the sole inheritor of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. It is estimated that the USSR had approximately 35,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled at the time of its collapse.
In 2002, the United States and Russia agreed to reduce their stockpiles to not more than 2200 warheads each in the SORT treaty. In 2003, the US rejected Russian proposals to further reduce both nation's nuclear stockpiles to 1500 each. Many say that this refusal was a sign of US aggression and accuse the US of thus leaving the danger of US and Russia's mutual destruction. On the other hand, Russia is actively producing and developing new nuclear weapons. Since 1997 it manufactures Topol-M (SS-27) ICBMs which current US air defence systems are unable to destroy.
Russia's nuclear warheads are deployed in four areas:
- 1 - Land based immobile (silos), like SS-18 Satan.
- 2 - Land-based mobile, like SS-27 Topol M.
- 3 - Submarine based, like SS-N-30 Bulava.
- 4 - Air-based warheads of Russia's Air Forces bombers.
Biological weapons
Main article: Soviet program of biological weaponsSoviet program of biological weapons has been initially developed by the Soviet Ministry of Defense (between 1945 and 1973)
Soviet Union signed the Biological Weapons Convention on April 10, 1972 and ratified the treaty on March 26, 1975. Since then, the program of Biological weapons was run primarily by the "civilian" Biopreparat agency, although it also included numerous facilities run by the Soviet Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Chemical Industry, Ministry of Health, and Soviet Academy of Sciences
According to Ken Alibek, who was deputy-director of Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons agency, and who defected to the USA in 1992, weapons were developed in labs in isolated areas of the Soviet Union including mobilization facilities at Omutininsk, Penza and Pokrov and research facilities at Moscow, Stirzhi and Vladimir. These weapons were tested at several facilities most often at "Rebirth Island" (Vozrozhdeniya) in the Aral Sea by firing the weapons into the air above monkeys tied to posts, the monkeys would then be monitored to determine the effects.
There were accidents including one at Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) where anthrax was accidentally released when one of filters was temporarily removed, and people across the street in a factory fell ill and died. The story about Sverdlovsk anthrax leak was published in Russia in 1993 .
Chemical weapons
Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention on January 13, 1993 and ratified it on November 5, 1997. Russia declared an arsenal of 40,000 tons of chemical weapons in 1997.
Russia met its treaty obligations by destroying 1% of its chemical agents by the Chemical Weapons Convention's 2002 deadline but requested technical and financial assistance and extensions on the deadlines of 2004 and 2007 due to the environmental challenges of chemical disposal. This extension procedure spelled out in the treaty has been utilized by other countries, including the United States.
See also
Category:Soviet nuclear program
References
- ^ Russia's nuclear capabilities by Adrian Blomfield, Telegraph, 5 June 2007
- ^ Alibek, K. and S. Handelman. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World -- Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it. Delta (2000) ISBN 0-385-33496-6
External links
- Abolishing Weapons of Mass Destruction: Addressing Cold War and Other Wartime Legacies in the Twenty-First Century By Mikhail S. Gorbachev
- Nuclear Threat Initiative on Russia by National Journal
- UK statement on the chemical weapons convention
- 1999 Nuclear stockpile estimate
- Nuclear Notebook: Russian nuclear forces, 2006, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2006.
- Nuclear Files.org Current information on nuclear stockpiles in Russia
- Chemical Weapons in Russia: History, Ecology, Politics by Lev Fedorov, Moscow, Center of Ecological Policy of Russia, 27 July 1994