CHEBOKSARY, September 30. /TASS/. Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov has dismissed as foolish the rumors about Novichok reserves allegedly kept in stock in Russia.

"Listen, I'm not in the mood to discuss this foolishness. We’ve been through all of this before, let’s move on.  Apparently some people have nothing to do at all, so they feel the need to drum up some sort of agenda," he told the media, when asked if in the wake of the incident with blogger Alexey Navalny Moscow was prepared to provide proof to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) there were no amounts of the Novichok agent in Russia.

Russia and the United States were obliged to dispose of their chemical weapons stockpiles in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, which took effect in 1997. Under the original timetable the process was to be completed no later than 2007, but eventually the deadlines had to be revised for technical and financial reasons. Russia eliminated its last chemical weapons in 2017.