The Convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and on their destruction (CWC) stipulates the realization of the detailed procedure for the verification of the implementation of all its provisions, including the analytical control of the presence of the prohibited substances in samples, taken during the inspections of the sites of alleged development of chemical weapons (CW). In 1992 the Laboratory for the chemical and analytical control of the Military academy of radiological, chemical and biological defence named after Marshal of the Soviet Union S.K. Timoshenko has been created, and from the very beginning it participates in the above mentioned verification programme. Since 2006 the Laboratory operates within the framework of the federal state budgetary establishment «27 Scientific Centre» of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. As a result of the successful performance in the OPCW`s (the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) Official Inter-Laboratory Proficiency Testing Programme, in 2000 the Laboratory has been awarded the status of «designated» (a type of OPCW`s accreditation). It has been certified to perform independent analysis of authentic samples, taken from the sites of international inspections and transferred off-site in accordance with the relevant provisions of the CWC. To date, the OPCW has organized 42 official OPCW Proficiency Tests for the analysis of environmental and technological samples, and two official OPCW Biomedical Proficiency Tests. In 2016, together with the accreditation for the analysis of environmental and technological samples, valid since 2000, the Laboratory of the «27 Scientific Centre» of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation has been designated for the analysis of authentic biomedical samples. During its 25 years of existence, the Laboratory has been successfully solving the problems of the analysis of composite objects during the investigations into the alleged use of chemical weapons, as well as of the analysis of samples, taken from the burial sites for abandoned chemical weapons and from the territories of their former production facilities.

In May 2016 a special expedition by Russia’s Defence Ministry and Russian Geographical Society was organized in order to explore the island of Matua located near the centre of the Kuril Islands chain. By the beginning of World War II the island has been turned into the veritable fortress by the Japanese. There were certain reasons to suggest that the island could be used by the Japanese military for the development, production and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. Because of that an NBC control group, formed from the specialists of several scientific research institutions of the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation was included in the joint team. The tasks of the group were to reveal and evaluate the NBC environment on Matua Island, to provide the protection of the personnel and the mitigation of any possible NBC contamination of the terrain and the Japanese military installations on the island. The group was also supposed to check the operational characteristics of NBC reconnaissance equipment and to conduct biological analysis at high northern latitudes without any fixed-site laboratories. The expedition has been working on the island from April 20 until June 29, 2016. The survey of the fortifications and engineering constructions on Matua Island, as well as the analysis of the contents of several chemical tanks and bottles, found on the island, revealed the absence of any evidence of the production of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons on Matua at the time of the Japanese military presence until August 1945. The analysis of the environmental samples (soil and water), taken at the locations of the surveys, and of the biological samples, taken from the organs of several mouse-like rodents, caught near the expedition camp, did not reveal any causative agents of infectious and particularly dangerous diseases. The radioactive contamination, residual radiation and gamma-rays were not detected on the territory of the island.

The last chemical munition from Russian arsenals of chemical weapons has been destroyed September 22, 2017, at the Kizner facility in Udmurtia. Chemical weapons (CW) destruction started at the times of the demise of the USSR and the change of political formation in the country, followed by the collapse of its economy. Russian Federation Government Decree № 305, «On the Approval of the Special Federal Targeted Program for the Destruction of Chemical Weapons Stockpiles in the Russian Federation» (21 March 1996), became an important milestone in Russia`s fulfilling its international commitments, including its chemical weapons disarmament obligations. Due to certain Soviet scientific and technological advances and thanks to the extraordinary efforts and talent of the experts from the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, from the Federal Agency for the Safe Storage and Destruction of Chemical Weapons and from several other scientific research organizations, the CW destruction program has been completed three years ahead of schedule. Two-stage process of chemical neutralization, technically adapted to different types and ways of CW stockpiling, have been used for CW destruction. Seven special facilities have been built in Gorny (Saratov region), Kambarka and Kizner (Udmurt Republic), Maradykovsky (Kirov region), Shchuch'ye (Kurgan region), Leonidovka (Penza region) and Pochep (Bryansk region) for this purpose. 40,000 metric tons of CW have been destroyed at these facilities. The implementation of the Federal Targeted Program three years ahead of schedule saved considerable financial resources for the country and saved the population of the regions where CW stockpiling and destruction facilities have been located, from serious danger in case of any incident or accident.

A bioreactor (cultivator or fermenter) is one of the main elements of the vast majority of instrumentation-technological lines of immunological medicinal preparations. The construction of special equipment for industrial microbiology in our country was determined by the research, related to the development of technology of the production of live plaque vaccine. In the early 1930’s A.L. Berlin studied the approaches to the creation of laboratory cultivating devices in the city of Saratov on the basis of the State Regional Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the SouthEast of Russia, the People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR. At the same time this problem has been solved by N.G. Shcherbina in the Crimean Sanitary-Bacteriological Institute (Sevastopol). In 1936, a group of researchers from the Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene of the Red Army (Kirov) was involved in the research of the processes and technologies of the industrial microbiology. In 1946 the first industrial apparatus of A.F. Shesterenko under sterile conditions ensured the production of large volumes (up to 800 mattresses) of the culture of the vaccine strain EV of the NIIEG line of the plague microbe.

First attempts to ban chemical weapons (CW) as a method of warfare have been made since the second half of the XIX century. At the beginning of the XX century, several legal documents – declarations, protocols and conventions, forbidding the use of poisons, poisonous weapons, poisonous and asphyxiating gases and means of their delivery, have been adopted at the international level. But all these documents, including the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the 1925 Geneva Protocol, turned out to be useless and ineffective as a means of deterrence. They could prevent neither large-scale use of CW in World War I, nor their further development. Instead of the assistance to the prohibition of CW, in fact they assisted their legalization and further arms race. The article is dedicated to the history of first efforts to ban CW by international treaties. It describes in details the circumstances of the elaboration of these declarations, protocols and conventions in connection with other general security problems, their further adoption or breakdown. Special attention is paid to the attitude towards CW at the beginning of the XX century and their use as a means of pressure and propaganda.