On November 27, 2023, the Twenty-Eighth Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CSP-28) opened in The Hague, Netherlands. This five-day meeting discusses various aspects associated with implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which has been in effect since April 29 1997. Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is responsible for fulfilling the Convention’s mandate.

Bakhmut, an eastern Ukrainian city, has been enduring the consequences of Russia's aggression since the outset of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Once known as Artemivsk, it retained this name until 2016, encompassing both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. During the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian occupiers laid claim to Bakhmut as part of their territorial ambitions. However, the Ukrainian government managed to retake the city in mid-2014. Russia's interest in Bakhmut stems from its strategic geography, which enables them to disrupt Ukraine's supply lines.

Alexei Navalny, the Russian pro-democratic opposition figure and anti-corruption activist, wrote in an August 2021 article that “[I] did not die from poisoning by a chemical weapon, and it would seem that corruption played no small part in my survival.” Fortunately, he lives to tell this ordeal. Navalny was recollecting the assassination attempt on his life exactly a year back, with a suspected nerve agent. On August 20, 2020, Navalny was grievously ill onboard a flight from Tomsk (Siberia) to Moscow.

Presentation to the 23rd CWC Conference of States Parties (CSP) Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, The Hague, The Netherlands, November 23, 2018

Mr Chairman, Director-General, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s an honour to be present at the 23rd Conference of States Parties (CSP-23) and the 4th Review Conference of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The incident of poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence official, and his daughter on March 4, 2018, in Salisbury, (United Kingdom) allegedly by the Russians have caught the attention of the world. Two months after the notorious incident, on May 18 Russian President Vladimir Putin said that ‘Sergei Skripal would be dead if military grade toxin was used’. With this remark, Putin pushed the investigations of the alleged use of nerve agent ‘Novichoks’ against Sergei Viktorovich Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal into complete disarray.

In his famous 1990 essay in Foreign Affairs, Charles Krauthammer had declared that the unipolar moment had arrived. He had listed a few reasons to support his argument; there was no challenging power, nor was there likely any in the few decades, there was no power dispersion at the international level at that moment, the former Soviet Union’s capacity was in a decline. Thus, Krauthammer emphasised, at that time there was no first-rate power in the world that could match the capacity of the US.

The Chemical Weapons Convention which marked its tenth anniversary on April 29 bans the development, production, acquisition and use of chemical agents (e.g. Vesicants and nerve agents) and requires the destruction of existing stockpiles.