Monitoring Desk
MSOCOW: Every year, Russian civilian weapons manufacturers supply the United States with millions of rounds of ammunition. In the first eight months of this year, $ 114 million worth of cartridges were imported from Russia to the United States. But Washington’s sanctions, which prohibit the import of Russian cartridges, could deprive Russia of its largest sales market, writes RBC.
US sanctions could significantly reduce the presence of Russian civilian ammunition manufacturers in the US market. RBC writes about it .
On August 20, the United States authorities announced that a second round of economic restrictions was being introduced against Russia. Sanctions under the US Chemical and Biological Weapons Control Act (CBW) went into effect on September 7. Officially, they will last a year.
Restrictions, in particular, are imposed on the “permanent import” into the United States of small arms and ammunition from Russia. American importers will be denied new import licenses for such products.
The White House report indicated that anti-Russian sanctions are being imposed due to the use of the Novichok nerve agent. Washington is also confident that Moscow was involved in the incident with Alexei Navalny. Americans accuse FSB officers of using Novichok. All these accusations are denied in Moscow.
The sanctions can only be lifted if the American president manages to convince Congress that Russia has abandoned the use of chemical weapons and is ready to compensate Navalny .
At the same time, all official documents indicate that the Russian authorities got rid of chemical weapons four years ago. In 2017, chemical weapons stockpiles were destroyed at the Kizner plant. It was the last active facility where nerve agents were stored.
By the end of September 2017, Russia had completely completed the elimination of chemical weapons.
This process lasted 15 years. During this time, 4 million 352 thousand 33 chemical munitions, 107 large-capacity tanks and 927 containers with toxic substances sarin, soman, VX, mustard gas and lewisite were destroyed.
Thus, the country’s authorities have fully complied with their obligations under the Geneva Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction. This fact was confirmed by the director general of the technical secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ahmet Uzumdzhu , who handed over to the Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Geogriy Kalamanov a certificate of Russia’s complete completion of the destruction of chemical weapons.
As for the export of weapons, annually Russian manufacturers supplied cartridges (loaded with bullets) to the United States in the amount of over 7.2 billion rubles, writes RBC , citing data from the US Census Bureau.
According to American statistics, in the summer, imports of Russian cartridges grew from $ 0.7 million (in July) to almost $ 28 million (in August), the newspaper writes, stressing that such data in Russia are closed.
From January to August 2021, the import of cartridges from Russia to the United States reached $ 114 million.At the same time, Russian suppliers took first place at the end of 2020. They account for 21% of the total imports of gun ammunition in the United States. The United States imported more than 765 million rounds of rounds from Russia last year, according to industry consultancy Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting.
Courtesy: (gazeta.ru)
