RICHMOND, Ky. — The last of the United States’ declared chemical weapons stockpile was destroyed at a sprawling military installation in eastern Kentucky, the White House announced Friday, a milestone that closes a chapter of warfare dating back to World War I.

Workers at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky destroyed rockets filled with GB nerve agent, completing a decadeslong campaign to eliminate a stockpile that by the end of the Cold War totaled more than 30,000 tons.

“For more than 30 years, the United States has worked tirelessly to eliminate our chemical weapons stockpile,” President Joe Biden said in a statement released by the White House. “Today, I am proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the final munition in that stockpile — bringing us one step closer to a world free from the horrors of chemical weapons.”

The U.S. faced a Sept. 30 deadline to eliminate its remaining chemical weapons under the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which took effect in 1997 and was joined by 193 countries. The munitions being destroyed in Kentucky are the last of 51,000 M55 rockets with GB nerve agent — a deadly toxin also known as sarin — that have been stored at the depot since the 1940s.

By destroying the munitions, the U.S. is officially underscoring that these types of weapons are no longer acceptable in the battlefield and sending a message to the handful of countries that haven’t joined the agreement, military experts say.

Chemical weapons were first used in modern warfare in World War I, where they were estimated have killed at least 100,000. Despite their use being subsequently banned by the Geneva Convention, countries continued to stockpile the weapons until the treaty calling for their destruction.

In southern Colorado, workers at the Army Pueblo Chemical Depot started destroying the weapons in 2016, and on June 22 completed their mission of neutralizing an entire cache of about 2,600 tons of mustard blister agent. The projectiles and mortars comprised about 8.5% of the country’s original chemical weapons stockpile of 30,610 tons of agent.

Nearly 800,000 chemical munitions containing mustard agent were stored since the 1950s inside row after row of heavily guarded concrete and earthen bunkers that pock the landscape near a large swath of farmland east of Pueblo.

In the 1980s, the community around Kentucky’s Blue Grass Army Depot rose up in opposition to the Army’s initial plan to incinerate the plant’s 520 tons of chemical weapons, leading to a decadeslong battle over how they would be disposed of.

The military eliminated most of its existing stockpile by burning weapons at other, more remote sites such as Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean or at a chemical depot in the middle of the Utah desert.

The Kentucky storage facility has housed mustard agent, VX and sarin nerve agents, much of it inside rockets and other projectiles, since the 1940s. The state’s disposal plant was completed in 2015 and began destroying weapons in 2019. It uses a process called neutralization to dilute the deadly agents so they can be safely disposed of.

Workers at the Pueblo site used heavy machinery to meticulously — and slowly — load aging weapons onto conveyor systems that fed into secure rooms where remote-controlled robots removed the weapons’ fuses and bursters before the mustard agent was neutralized with hot water and mixed with a caustic solution to prevent the reaction from reversing. The byproduct was further broken down in large tanks swimming with microbes, and the mortars and projectiles were decontaminated at 538 degrees Celsius and recycled as scrap metal. 

Problematic munitions that were leaky or overpacked were sent to an armored, stainless steel detonation chamber to be destroyed at about 593 degrees Celsius.

The Colorado and Kentucky sites were the last among several, including Utah and the Johnston Atoll, where the nation’s chemical weapons had been stockpiled and destroyed. Other locations included facilities in Alabama, Arkansas and Oregon.

Officials say the elimination of the U.S. stockpile is a major step forward for the Chemical Weapons Convention. Only three countries — Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan — have not signed the treaty. A fourth, Israel, has signed but not ratified the treaty. 

Concerns remain that some parties to the convention, particularly Russia and Syria, possess undeclared chemical weapons stockpiles. Biden on Friday urged Russia and Syria to fully comply with the treaty, and called on the remaining countries to join it.
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The United States is moving ahead with plans to provide Ukraine with a deadly and controversial weapon as part of a new $800 million security package aimed at bolstering Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russia.

For the first time since Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year, the U.S. will provide Ukraine with cluster munitions — shells or bombs that open in midair — capable of spreading hundreds of smaller charges, or bomblets, over a wide area.

The munitions can inflict heavy casualties in civilian areas and are banned under a 2010 treaty signed by 111 countries. But Russia and Ukraine, which have both used cluster munitions during the conflict, are not signatories. The U.S. also has never signed the convention.

“We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Friday. “But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine doesn’t have enough artillery.

“That is intolerable,” he added.

U.S. officials declined to say just how many rounds of cluster munitions Washington will send Ukraine as part of the new aid package, although they said the new munitions, in the form of 155 mm artillery rounds, will arrive in time to help Ukrainian forces with the current counteroffensive.

Sullivan said the decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions was not an easy one and was made by President Joe Biden after consultations with U.S. allies and lawmakers, and after “a unanimous recommendation from his national security team.”

U.S. law generally prohibits the transfer of cluster munitions with failure rates of more than 1%, but Sullivan said Biden signed a waiver allowing the move because of national security needs.

Pentagon officials Friday also defended the decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions.

“We want to make sure that the Ukrainians have sufficient artillery to keep them in the fight,” Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl told reporters, citing what he called “the urgency of the moment.”

“The worst thing for civilians in Ukraine is for Russia to win the war,” he said, noting the Ukrainian counteroffensive has not made progress as quickly as many had hoped.

“It’s been hard sledding because the Russians had six months to dig in,” Kahl said. “Those defensive belts that the Russians have put in place in the east and the south are hard.”

Ukraine has been asking for additional cluster munitions for months, saying they are critical to its efforts to push back Russian forces.

“The transfer of additional volumes of shells to Ukraine is a very significant contribution to the acceleration of deoccupation procedures,” Ukrainian presidential political adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters ahead of the U.S. announcement. “Especially if we are talking about cluster ammunition, which is undoubtedly capable of having an extraordinary psychoemotional impact on already demoralized Russian occupation groups.”

Until now, the U.S. had been reluctant to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, prioritizing other types of weapons and systems. That thinking seemed to change in recent weeks, though, as Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive struggled to retake ground.

Human rights groups and activists have long opposed the use of cluster munitions, pointing to high failure or dud rates, which leave areas saturated with unexploded bomblets.

“If they fall or land on your home or a populated area, it can be devastating,” Mary Wareham, the acting director of Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division, told VOA.

“When they fail, you have unexploded submunitions lying around that endanger civilians, endanger de-miners, that have to be cleared, that have to be destroyed,” she said. “It’s a very time-consuming and costly exercise.”

Wareham acknowledged Russia has been “using hundreds of cluster munitions since the very first day” of its latest invasion. But she added, “that doesn’t mean Ukraine should also be using this prohibited weapon.”

A report issued by the Cluster Munition Monitor last year found that through the first five months of Russian’s latest invasion of Ukraine, at least 215 Ukrainians — almost all civilians — were killed and another 474 were injured in Russian attacks using cluster munitions.

“Cluster munition use in Ukraine mostly affected civilian infrastructure, with attacks damaging homes, hospitals, schools, playgrounds, and in one instance a cemetery where mourners were among the casualties,” the report said.

U.S. officials said Friday that Ukraine has given the U.S. written assurances it will not use the U.S.-made cluster munitions in urban areas and that Ukrainian forces would track when and where such munitions were used to facilitate clearing efforts once the fighting is over.

“We welcome the decision of the U.S. to provide Ukraine with the new liberation weapons that will significantly help us to de-occupy our territories while saving the lives of the Ukrainian soldiers,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov posted on social media Friday, backing the U.S. statements that use of the munitions would be closely monitored and tracked.

“Ukraine will use these munitions only for the de-occupation of our internationally recognized territories,” he wrote. “These munitions will not be used on the officially recognized territory of Russia.”

Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. gave similar assurances in an interview with VOA.

“We Ukrainians will be using them very, very responsibly because it’s our territory, it’s our people we are liberating,” Oksana Markarova said. “And we have shown [a] number of times that we are actually doing this, and we are not only adhering to all the conventions [with cluster munitions] but we also are very responsible in in its usage.”

The U.S. also pushed back against allegations that U.S.-made cluster munitions present the same type of threat to civilians as the ones being used by Russia.

Both Sullivan and Kahl said Russia has been deploying cluster munitions with dud rates of 30% to 40%, while the U.S. is sending Ukraine cluster munitions that have undergone repeated testing to ensure failure rates of less than 2.5%.

There are questions, however, about how much of a difference U.S.-provided cluster munitions will make on the battlefield.

“I don’t expect the cluster munitions to be game changers,” Brookings Institution senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon told VOA in an email.

“I think cluster munitions can help tactically, like artillery, by forcing Russian troops manning defensive positions to seek cover when Ukrainian vehicles are attempting an offensive,” he wrote. “That said, Ukraine has already had artillery (albeit not enough), and Russian troops can still take partial cover while maintaining their positions.”

Other experts agree.

“There’s no such thing as a game changer … but it will help,” Mark Cancian, a retired U.S. Marine colonel and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

“Cluster munitions are very good against area targets, targets that are spread out,” like infantry and truck convoys, he said, noting the use of cluster munitions could slow the rapid pace at which Ukraine’s military is going through standard munitions.

It could also take pressure off the U.S. and other countries that have been providing Ukraine with ammunition and artillery as their own stockpiles dwindle.

“The stocks of regular munitions are quite low and it’s not clear how much more we can give them,” Cancian said.

U.S. officials Friday admitted that concerns about ammunition stockpiles factored into the decision to give Ukraine the cluster munitions.

“We are reaching a point in this conflict, because of the dramatically high expenditure rates of artillery by Ukraine and by Russia, where we need to build a bridge from where we are to today to where we have enough monthly production of unitary rounds that unitary rounds alone will suffice to give Ukraine what it needs,” Sullivan said.

VOA Russian’s Liliya Anisimova and VOA’s Ukrainian Service contributed to this report.
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Washington hopes to rally Southeast Asian nations to take tougher action against Myanmar’s military junta and to push back on China’s actions in the South China Sea as top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken heads to the region for meetings next week, a State Department official said on Friday.

Secretary of State Blinken will travel to Indonesia to participate in a meeting of foreign ministers from the ASEAN regional bloc after he joins President Joe Biden in the United Kingdom and in Lithuania for NATO meetings from Sunday to Wednesday.

Daniel Kritenbrink, the top State Department official for East Asia, told reporters that Myanmar, which was plunged into chaos by a 2021 military coup, would be “one of the key issues” discussed in Jakarta.

ASEAN has barred Myanmar’s ruling generals from its high-level meetings, but Thailand has proposed re-engaging with the junta.

“We do expect our friends and partners in ASEAN … to continue to downgrade Myanmar’s representation in the ASEAN ministerial and we also look forward to finding ways to increase pressure on the regime to compel the regime to end its violence and return to a path of democracy,” Kritenbrink said during a phone call to preview the trip.

Washington last month issued sanctions against two Myanmar banks used by the junta to convert foreign currency, in a move aimed at reducing the military’s ability to import weapons and material for its crackdown on anti-coup forces.

Kritenbrink said last week that countries in the region should make progress in resolving maritime disputes with each other in order to strengthen their collective voice in disputes with China in the South China Sea.

Kritenbrink said on Friday that the U.S. would work with ASEAN members in Jakarta to push back against what he said was “an upward trend of unhelpful and coercive and irresponsible Chinese actions.”

“It’s not a matter of getting countries on board with the U.S. view, it’s a matter of working with our partners to advance our shared view and vision for the region, and to push back on behavior that runs counter to that vision,” he said.
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WASHINGTON — Russian fighter jets flew dangerously close to several U.S. drone aircraft over Syria again Thursday, setting off flares and forcing the MQ-9 Reapers to take evasive maneuvers, the Air Force said.

It was the second time in 24 hours that Russia has harassed U.S. drones there.

“We urge Russian forces in Syria to cease this reckless behavior and adhere to the standards of behavior expected of a professional air force so we can resume our focus on the enduring defeat of ISIS,” Lieutenant General Alex Grynkewich, head of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, said in a statement.

Colonel Michael Andrews, Air Forces Central Command spokesperson, said “the Russian harassment, including close fly-bys, by one SU-34 and one SU-35 and deploying flares directly into the MQ-9, lasted almost an hour. So it wasn’t a quick fly-by, but much more of a sustained and unprofessional interaction.”

U.S. Air Forces Central released videos of the two separate incidents that took place Wednesday and Thursday. In the first incident, which took place about 10:40 a.m. local time Wednesday in Northwest Syria, Russian SU-35 fighters closed in on a Reaper, and one of the Russian pilots moved their aircraft in front of a drone and engaged the SU-35’s afterburner, which greatly increases its speed and air pressure.

The jet blast from the afterburner can potentially damage the Reaper’s electronics, and Grynkewich said it reduced the drone operator’s ability to safely operate the aircraft.

Later a number of the so-called parachute flares moved into the drone’s flight path. The flares are attached to parachutes.

In the second incident, which took place over Northwest Syria around 9:30 a.m. Thursday local time, “Russian aircraft dropped flares in front of the drones and flew dangerously close, endangering the safety of all aircraft involved,” Grynkewich said.

The drones were not armed with weapons and are commonly used for reconnaissance missions.

Army General Erik Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement that Russia’s violation of ongoing efforts to clear the airspace over Syria “increases the risk of escalation or miscalculation.”

About 900 U.S. forces are deployed to Syria to work with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces battling the Islamic State militants there. No other details about the drone operation were provided.
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GEORGETOWN, GUYANA – The United States remains active in its search for a country to head a multinational force in troubled Haiti, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday, without offering Washington’s lead.

Blinken met Wednesday at a Caribbean summit with Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry and again spoke of the urgency of an international force in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, where gangs have taken over broad stretches of territory.

But no country has stepped forward despite nearly a year of calls for the force by Henry and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“We’re in very active conversations with countries in the region and beyond about such a force and we’re in active conversations, of course, at the United Nations about what it might do to give a force the proper imprimatur from the international community,” Blinken told reporters in Guyana.

“Part of this involves making sure that countries step up to play important roles in such a force, particularly identifying a country that would play a leading-nation role,” Blinken said.

But he declined to offer such a role for the United States, which has a long history of intervention in Haiti, and instead reiterated U.S. support for building Haiti’s fledgling national police.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who ended America’s longest war in Afghanistan, has made clear he has no intention of putting U.S. troops at risk in Haiti.

Haiti Foreign Minister Jean Victor Geneus spoke to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday about the urgent need for the international force.

And the U.N. special representative for Haiti reported on the violence there. In her report, Maria Isabel Salvador said that at least 264 suspected gang members in Haiti have been killed by vigilante groups since April.

“The appearance of vigilante groups adds another layer of complexity,” Salvador told the U.N. Security Council.

Haitian police have been unable to quell the unprecedented violence by gangs that control much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and residents have begun to take matters into their own hands.

Haitians have not voted since 2016, with the last elected president, Jovenel Moise, assassinated in July 2021. Henry, the prime minister, has promised to step down after a new government is installed in February 2024, although election targets have repeatedly slipped in Haiti.

Blinken met with Henry at the Caribbean summit in Trinidad and Tobago, where the top US diplomat also called for renewed efforts to hold elections in Haiti.

Guyanese President Irfaan Ali said there was progress on Haiti at the Caribbean summit, with Kenya and Rwanda, whose president, Paul Kagame, was in attendance, offering support for the police force.

A group of former leaders, including former Prime Ministers Bruce Golding of Jamaica and Kenny Anthony of Saint Lucia, agreed to work with both Henry and other Haitian stakeholders on a political transition, Ali said.

“Prime Minister Henry is committed to broadening this transitional government,” Ali said.
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On a June afternoon when temperatures climbed near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), Alejandra Pena gently tipped a jug of water into her son’s mouth. Like other children in the migrant camp, a mile-long stretch of tents along the banks of the river separating Mexico from the United States, the toddler had diarrhea. Pena worried the boy was dehydrated.

“Drink, Natanael. Drink,” Pena coaxed. One of the few humanitarian groups operating in the camp had told her Natanael was malnourished and underweight, she said, attributing his condition to the lack of clean water and poor sanitation in the camp.

Pena, 34, fled Venezuela after a criminal group killed her sister, according to interviews and police records. Hoping to seek asylum in the United States, she said her family was stuck in northern Mexico because of new U.S. border rules adopted on May 11 by the administration of President Joe Biden.

The rule requires migrants to make an appointment on a government-run smartphone app before approaching the border – but none of the people with Pena has a device.

“We are paralyzed here,” Pena said.

Biden, a Democrat, promised to replace the hardline policies of Republican President Donald Trump, including the COVID-era public health order Title 42, with a more humane immigration system.

Title 42 allowed border agents to expel migrants to Mexico without a chance to seek asylum. The new Biden regulation allows migrants once again to ask for asylum at the border but wait in Mexico for a slot on the app or risk a sped-up deportation process that could be conducted while they are held in detention.

Officials said the regulation and other Biden immigration policies are reducing illegal border crossings that have hit record highs in recent years.

But in the first month of the new policy, Reuters interviews with more than 50 migrants, U.S. and Mexican officials, a review of court records and previously unreported data found:

Tens of thousands of people waiting in dangerous Mexican border towns to snag a spot on the app, according to U.S. and Mexican officials, and warnings from humanitarian groups of deteriorating sanitary conditions at migrant camps;
A sharp drop in people passing their initial U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum screenings, down to 46% for single adults from an average of 83% from 2014 to 2019, according to government data contained in a court filing;
A 35% increase in people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the filing said;
A sharp rise in time spent in Border Patrol custody, according to previously unreported U.S. government data obtained by Reuters;
Roughly 50,000 people deported, according to the court filing.
Migrants who don't use the Customs and Border Protection app, called CBP One, face a higher bar to claim asylum if they passed through another country without seeking refuge there, a standard which critics say mirrors a Trump policy that was blocked by courts.

 

Those who fail the screening can be deported and banned from entering the U.S. for five years.

A senior Biden administration official told Reuters the policy was working. Government figures show the number of migrants caught crossing illegally has dropped by 69% in one month.

“Our goal is to incentivize people to go through legal channels,” said the official, who was granted anonymity as a condition of the interview. “We’re seeing, so far, initial positive results.”

The U.S. on June 30 increased the number of appointments available on the app to 1,450 a day from 1,250.

The Biden official said the administration is working with shelters and other non-governmental organizations to expand internet access for migrants, adding that there was no need for them to wait in dangerous border towns: “There are plenty of safer parts of Mexico where people can go.”

Juan Rodriguez, head of the state-level migrant services agency, said officials visit the Matamoros camp a few times a month to provide water and health services.

The Mexican federal government did not respond to requests for comments on the camp conditions or the regulations.

By mid-June, the population of the Matamoros camp exceeded 5,000, according to Rodriguez, with an additional 3,000 migrants scattered across Matamoros in shelters, hotels, Airbnbs, abandoned houses and an out-of-service gas station, local officials said.

Humanitarian organizations say at times the camp has grown bigger under Biden than during the Trump years.

Approximately 104,000 migrants are amassed in northern Mexico overall, according to U.S. government figures.

After dark

As mosquitos descended at dusk, Pena doused her children in the last of their bug spray. Swollen red bites pockmarked Natanael’s face and the bodies of his sisters Nathalya, 11, and Nathaly, 13. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said they have seen a few suspected cases of malaria and dengue fever.

Nightfall also brings out criminal groups, camp residents say.

Cindy, a 23-year-old from Honduras, hesitated for weeks to approach the U.S. border, even after she was raped repeatedly in the Matamoros camp and in a house nearby by men she believed to be part of a cartel, she told Reuters.

Cindy, who Reuters is identifying only by her first name because of the nature of the attacks, said the men threatened to “disappear” her 3-year-old son if she reported the assaults to Mexican authorities, according to interviews and a written report from the psychiatrist who evaluated and accounts from her attorney.

Desperate after multiple assaults, and unable to secure an appointment on the CBP One app, she and her son walked up to the international bridge on May 21. She said they were allowed to enter and given a notice to appear in immigration court in Houston in August.

Officials and advocates said families are subject to the higher asylum standard but have not been held for in-custody screenings. Cindy was not detained, though she may still have a tough time winning her case in court.

The Mexican state-level security agency did not respond to request for comment about violence in the camp. The Biden administration did not respond to questions about Cindy’s case.

‘Part of the enforcement’

The Biden border strategy set a target of 63,000 sped-up screenings for the month of June, more than five times the previous high in July 2019, according to a previously unreported virtual town hall for USCIS officers shared with Reuters.

Asylum division chief John Lafferty told the town hall the administration aims to process migrants for release or deportation within one or two weeks and cut the time migrants have to consult with a lawyer from 48 hours to 24 hours.

Some asylum officers in the meeting raised concerns about the timelines.

In a June 7 filing supporting a lawsuit brought against the regulation by the American Civil Liberties Union and others in U.S. District Court in northern California, the union representing asylum officers said the policy puts “our international and moral commitments at risk.”

The government responded in legal filings that the rule was a “well-reasoned border management policy that for the past month and a half has been key to ensuring the continued functioning of the U.S. immigration and asylum system during exigent circumstances while providing ways for vulnerable populations to seek protection.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Homeland Security Department, which oversees USCIS, told Reuters the regulation will reduce the strain on immigration courts by swiftly denying asylum claims with no merit. Lafferty did not respond to a request for comment.
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