Life In The Shadow Of The Soviet Union’s Chemical Arsenal
▻http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-chemical-weapons-shadow/25206172.html
All the residents of the village of Mirny, in Russia’s central Kirov Oblast, have gas masks tucked away somewhere, in cupboards or under beds. Klavdia explains how she was required to pick up the masks from local authorities about five years ago. She signed a receipt, tucked them away, and hasn’t needed to think about them since.
But in Mirny, you never know. The village is located just across the railroad tracks from the Maradykovsky chemical-weapons facility — one of eight sites in Russia where massive stockpiles of Soviet-era chemical weapons are being destroyed. Over the last seven years, nearly 7,000 tons of nerve agents like sarin, blister agents like Lewisite, and other deadly chemicals have been neutralized at Maradykovsky.