Ukraine has removed on Wednesday an additional 760 tonnes of mélange, a highly toxic Soviet-era rocket fuel component, from tis territory, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) announced.
The operation was conducted with OECE assistance and the amounts of toxic rocket fuel component were shipped from Ukraine to Russia to be processed into chemical products for civilian use, under a project supervised by the Vienna-based organisation.
With this shipment from the military base in Shevchenkove, Kharkiv region, Eastern Ukraine is now fully free of the dangerous substance used to propel short- and medium-range missiles.
It is expected that the mélange will be converted into chemical products, such as paint components, at chemical plants in Russia.
Before the disposal phase of the OSCE project was launched in 2009, Ukraine had a total of 16,000 tonnes of melange stored in six locations across the country. Now, 13,500 tonnes of mélange have been safely removed from Ukraine, with five out of six depots, including Shevchenkove, fully cleared.
The OSCE says that the works on the only remaining melange storage site, the Liubashivka military base in Southern Ukraine, have started this summer and will conclude by early 2014.
The melange disposal in Ukraine is the largest ever OSCE project financed by individual countries. OSCE participating States that provided more 20 million euro to the project are: the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden through the Swedish International Development and Co-operation Agency, and the United States of America.
The move of the authorities in Kiev comes during the country’s OSCE chairmanship. Ukraine took over the chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from Ireland on 1 January 2013 and will hold it in the course of the whole year.