MOSCOW, January 14 (RIA Novosti) – Russian naval escort ships are helping out in an international operation to remove chemical weapons stockpiles from war-torn Syria, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday.
Russia’s naval task force in the Mediterranean Sea is working with other nations, which include the United States, to evacuate the stockpiles from the Syrian port of Latakia, Shoigu said. The first batch of chemical weapons left Syria on January 7 aboard a Danish cargo vessel, escorted by the Russian nuclear-powered missile cruiser Peter the Great and a Chinese patrol ship.
The Defense Ministry in Moscow said Tuesday that this was the first time that the Russian and Chinese navies had cooperated in an operation.
Syria’s most dangerous chemicals, which include 20 tons of mustard gas, are scheduled to be removed from the country by March 31 and destroyed by the end of June as part of a cooperative effort to defuse international tensions related to its ongoing civil war.
Russia, the US, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Finland have contributed military equipment and personnel to the effort to transport chemical weapons out of Syria for destruction by hydrolysis in international waters.
The operation is part of a UN-backed deal, proposed by Russia and supported by the US, with the government of President Bashar Assad following a sarin gas attack in Syria in August.
More than 100,000 people have been killed and 9 million displaced since fighting broke out in Syria between government troops and armed rebels in 2011, according to the UN.
