Вил Мирзаянов - State Secrets - An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program

This sounds like an ode to humanism and common sense. But now let us turn to prose which cannot be done without describing our dirty reality.

A new toxic agent has been developed at a research institute of chemical technologies abbreviated in Russian as GSNIIOKhT. For its perfidy (“performance characteristics”) it has considerably surpassed the well-known VX gas, an injury with it is practically incurable. In any case those who were once affected with this toxic agent have remained disabled for the rest of their lives. The new agent served as the basis on which our own binary weapons have been developed – and not only developed but also successfully completed with the manufacture of a serially produced batch, following which those involved and uninvolved in the project were lavishly decorated with government awards. Our heroes were likewise honored with the diplomas and badges of the Lenin Prize laureates.

This was done in spring 1991 personally by President Mikhail Gorbachev. By that time he had already done all he could to immortalize himself – signed the well-known Bush-Gorbachev agreement on chemical weapons and was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. Let us recall the names of the two most remarkable recipients of that Lenin Prize: V. Petrunin, Director of GSNIIOKhT, and a certain general, deputy chief of the “chemical troops”, whom we shall designate as SOMEONE (he is among those, who joined up with the project and we shall not speak about real developers because work is work, let alone dangerous work.)

However, that was not the end either. The field tests of the new binary toxic agent were completed in the first quarter of the current year 1992 but not in “exposed” Shikhany (it was too troublesome to dodge American satellites), but at the chemical test range on the Ustyurt Plateau near Nukus. On that range correspondents even met – quite accidentally – General S. Petrov, chief of the “chemical troops”, and heard from the local military chief words, corresponding to the occasion, about phosphorous chemical agents – sarin, soman, and VX – used in the past, of course, whereas nothing was said about the new toxic agent (Trud, April 15, 1992).

And here we come to the inevitable deliberations on the perpetual theme of who is the master in our Russia. The first industrial batch of the new toxic agent was manufactured in Volgograd, whereas the Lenin Prize was awarded in Moscow still BEFORE we had elected Boris Yeltsin the first President. However, the chemical troops carried out the field tests of the toxic agent AFTER this election and his well-known statement of January 29, 1992 (“Russia is committed to the agreement with the USA on the non-production and elimination of chemical weapons signed in 1990.”). Incidentally, those tests were staged in a different state and it is by no means a fact that that state’s President Islam Karimov knew anything about this.

Such is the sad result of the five years we lived through after the proclaimed termination of work in the development of chemical weapons and until the completion of testing their most powerful variety. Today we can boast of an achievement: the Russian binary weapon has proved to be more effective than its American counterpart. So what?

To begin with, let us say that GSNIIOKhT has been literally poisoning Muscovites. Because at this research institute there are practically no filters on ventilation installations and all evaporating toxic agents fly straight into Moscow’s air. The decontamination of modern phosphorous chemical agents, which GSNIIOKhT has worked with until now is not as effective, as some authors of secret theses would like us to believe. Available scientific data unambiguously indicate that it is impossible to completely decontaminate either the new toxic agent – the pride of the generals – or the old ones (sarin, soman and VX). At the level of very small yet unsafe concentrations, they “live” for weeks or even months in the decontaminating solutions. This is what Muscovites have to deal with day in day out.

Incidentally, the practice of waste reclamation, accepted at GSNIIOKhT, is unsafe both for the personnel doing this job and for people in the neighborhood. Waste is kept in the open air in barrels, and then taken out as ordinary cargo by rail to Shikhany (Saratov Region) where their contents are simply emptied into a pit in the open field.

It will not be amiss to look even more deeply into the institute’s history. The point is that the entire vast territory of GSNIIOKhT has been polluted with toxic agents of the yperite (mustard gas) type. All the wastes, and the toxic agents themselves, were poured right onto the ground or dug at random. But they survive for an infinitely long time in soil, slowly migrating under the impact of atmospheric fallout into subsoil waters which then mix up with deeper waters. With a high degree of probability it can be said that artesian waters here have been contaminated. Thus the chromatographic analysis of running water in Block 7, supplied from an artesian well on the institute’s territory, has revealed the presence of a whole bunch of sulfur- and chlorine-containing compounds close to yperite in their structure. The institute’s leadership is perfectly well aware of this, which is why earthwork on the territory is carried out at the level of combat operations with the use of gas masks. All this is being carefully hidden.

In 1990 GSNIIOKhT was visited by the First Vice-Chairman of the Moscow City Council, who was very touched by the sight of guinea pigs, promised every kind of assistance and kept his word. However, it only remains to wonder why the Muscovite’s electee Sergey Stankevich, when visiting the world’s largest organization for development of chemical weapons, did not try to inquire about the quantity of lethal substances which were kept in the depot at that time. Usually there are at least eight to ten kilos here, and this quantity will be enough for Moscow, should a fire or any other accident occur at the institute. Let us say that this was already four years after the Chernobyl tragedy…

Several years ago SOMEONE assured the inhabitants of Chapaevsk on oath that all gaseous waste at the plant dealing with the destruction of chemical weapons would be passed through special filters. One can only admire the courage, prudence and self-preservation instinct of the inhabitants who didn’t believe him. They were right: GSNIIOKhT simply did not even envisage these filters in the project.

So ingloriously we embarked upon the road towards a world without chemical weapons, whose possessors we had become through the graces of our home-grown military-industrial complex. Instead of destroying old ones they will slip onto the development of new weapons, and they are much better in doing this. It looks as if the real masters of the military-industrial complex – generals and directors – will tolerate no stagnation in their doings. Consequently the people of Russia have no reasons whatsoever to entrust the destruction of chemical weapons to those who developed them.

At this point it is worth pondering once again over the purport of the dollar aid for which SOMEONE recently went across the ocean. Knowing our inglorious military-chemical past, it is safe to say that the 25 million dollars which the USA has initially allotted to Russia for the implementation of the chemical-weapon-elimination programme will be spent quite differently – to keep the military-industrial complex afloat, among other things, and even for carrying on the further development and improvement of new types of chemical weapons.

And recently the people of Russia were delighted by the appointment – in the post of head of the Committee on the Conventional Problems of the Chemical and Biological Weapons under the auspices of the President of Russia – of A. Kuntsevich, a “common Soviet person”, a general for whom chemical weapons were developed at GSNIIOKhT, a person who in 1982 promised not to respond to the escalation of American binary weapons, a specialist who assures us that the production of toxic agents was discontinued as early as 1987, a scientist who in 1991 was honored with a Lenin Prize for the development of the world’s most powerful chemical weapon, a government official who deceived the inhabitants of Chapaevsk with respect to the plant meant for the destruction of chemical weapons and, lastly, a politician who brought dollars from the USA for the continuation of chemical business. All of this is about A. Kuntsevich, an Academician and a Hero of Labor, a general and a laureate.