THE HAGUE, May 23. /TASS/. Ukraine’s aim in staging chemical provocations is to entice NATO into taking harsh measures, including military intervention, but Russia regularly informs the world Kiev is plotting such actions, Russia’s envoy to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Alexander Shulgin, told an online news briefing on Monday.
"Their aim is clear," he said, citing several organized provocations as an example. "The regime in Kiev wishes to internationalize the problem as much as possible, to secure more funding and to entice NATO into a harsh response, including military intervention. In the meantime, Washington and its allies are keen to eliminate the traces of their criminal biological activity in Ukraine, and secondly, to exert pressure on Russia to blame it for using weapons of mass destruction in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention."
In this context he expressed the certainty that an overwhelming majority of countries are unprepared to blindly follow instructions from Washington and Brussels.
"For its part Russia’s permanent mission regularly notifies the OPCW’s Technical Secretariate and the member-states of the provocations being plotted by the regime in Kiev and its Western sponsors," Shulgin said. He stressed that so far the regime in Kiev has been prevented from staging serious incidents and casualties have been avoided.