The United States and Britain are discussing the possibility of introducing additional sanctions against Russia for its alleged use of chemical weapons. This was announced on Thursday, March 4, by Bloomberg, citing sources.
The United States, according to the publication, is planning to introduce a number of additional restrictions against the Russian Federation, “starting with measures against Russian oligarchs, ending with focusing on the country’s national debt.” They will be applied in the event that “Moscow does not refuse to use chemical weapons.”
It is noted that in the next few weeks, state officials will also discuss actual anti-Russian sanctions with France and Germany, as well as with a number of other European countries.
Earlier, on March 3, the US State Department announced the conditions for the waiver of new sanctions against Russia. In order to avoid a second round of sanctions, the Russian side must declare and destroy “undeclared chemical weapons.”
On the same day, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, indicated that the United States presented itself as the main fighter against chemical weapons, speaking of chemical disarmament in the world, but in fact they were trying to divert the discussion from the fact that they had not destroyed their arsenal of chemical weapons.
At the end of December 2020, Vladimir Ermakov, Director of the Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that the United States, under various pretexts, was delaying its chemical disarmament program and, together with its allies, was doing everything to destroy the OPCW.
He added that in 2017, Russia successfully and three years ahead of schedule completed a national program to destroy all chemical weapons stockpiles left over from the Soviet era, while the United States remains the only owner of these weapons from among the OPCW member countries.