People in the courtyard of a house in the Left Bank district of Mariupol. File photoPARIS, Apr 12The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is concerned about recent unconfirmed reports of the use of chemical weapons in Mariupol, the organization said in a statement. media over the past 24 hours,” the statement said. The organization recalled that 193 OPCW member states, including Russia and Ukraine, are parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention. The Secretariat has been notified by both Russia and Ukraine of the threats of the use of toxic chemicals as weapons and has handed it over to all 193 OPCW Member States upon request,» the message reads. The OPCW remains ready to assist any State Party on his request in case of application and the threat of chemical weapons.
Residents of Mariupol did not confirm information about a chemical attack in the city. Earlier, the Ukrainian side reported that chemical weapons were allegedly used in Mariupol. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did not rule out earlier that the Ukrainian military, with the direct support of Western intelligence services, would stage new provocations. According to him, Russia will answer them with facts. The Russian Defense Ministry warned that Ukrainian nationalists could prepare a provocation using poisonous substances and attribute their actions to Russian forces. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, in Avdiivka, Ukrainian militants prepared an inhuman provocation with mass poisoning of residents of adjacent areas with chemical substances, and Ukrainian special services plan to blow up a storage facility with 120 tons of chlorine in the Kharkiv region in order to blame Russia later. 450 thousand people was the second largest city in the republic after Donetsk. However, in June of that year, the Ukrainian security forces regained control of Mariupol, and its eastern suburbs became one of the hottest places of conflict in Ukraine. On March 7, 2022, Alexander Semyonov, deputy commander of the Vostok battalion of the DPR, said that the city was surrounded, and a cleansing of some of its districts had begun. Currently, the allied forces of the DPR and Russia are fighting for the final liberation of the city. Among other Ukrainian units in Mariupol, there is a nationalist regiment «Azov», against whose fighters a criminal case has been initiated in the Russian Federation. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.» According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops, and as of March 25, they have completed the main tasks of the first stage — they have significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The main goal in the Russian military department was called the liberation of Donbass.
