At Leonidovka alone, there is more than enough nerve gas, if distributed by individual doses, to wipe out every human on Earth. Almost all of the villagers have worked in the arsenal. It was hot in the summer. We were told not to gather mushrooms and berries in the woods, that it was all poison. Eventually, the bombs may be destroyed at a new facility here, but there are no plans for cleaning up the abandoned dump.
Residents are uneasy.
Russia has promised to liquidate the declared arsenal of 40,000 tons of chemical weapons. It signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993 and ratified it in 1996. The treaty, which took effect last year, calls for abolishing the development, production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons and outlaws their use. Most experts agree that Russia's aging stocks have outlived any military utility. Under the treaty, Russia and other nations agreed to destroy the weapons over 10 to 15 years.