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Updated October 2009
Chemical Overview
Ukraine, since it gained its independence in 1991, has not been engaged in an offensive or defensive chemical warfare (CW) program. However, before 1991 its territory was used by the Soviet government for chemical weapons storage and testing. The Red Army conducted marine tests with experimental chemical weapons in the Black Sea near the cities of Odesa and Sevastopol. Chemical weapons stockpiles and storage bases were located in Zolotonosha (Cherkasy oblast), Ochakiv (on the Dnepr estuary and on the Black Sea), and Fastiv (Kiev oblast). In January 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin declared that all former Soviet chemical weapons had been moved to Russia.
Ukraine does not have a CW program, nor does it plan to establish one. Ukraine is a State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which it ratified in 1998.
Ukraine has adopted legislation that provides a legal framework for binding CWC implementation, including related provisions in the country's Criminal Code. As the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine stated in his speech to the Ninth Session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, "Ukraine strictly controls on the governmental level all export-import operations and transfers of scheduled chemicals."
Sources:
[1] Statement by H.E. Mr. Ihor Dolhov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, To the Ninth Session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, The Hague, 29 November 2004.
[2] Lev Fedorov, Khimicheskoye oruzhiye v Rossii: istoirya, ekologiya, politika [Chemical Weapons in Russia: History, Ecology, Politics], Moscow, Center of Ecological Policy of Russia, 1994.
This material is produced independently for NTI by the James Martin Center for
Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and
does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently
verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2010 by MIIS.
