Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the elimination of the last chemical agent from Russia’s stockpiles a historic event.

"Today the last chemical agent from Russia’s chemical weapons stockpiles will be destroyed. Without fanfare, we can say that this is indeed a historic event given the huge amount of chemical weapons arsenals since the Soviet time. Specialists said it could be used to destroy everything that moves on the Earth several times," Putin said.

"This [elimination of chemical weapons] is a huge step towards making the modern world more balanced and safer," Putin noted.

The Russian president issued his order during an on-line video conference with Russia’s last storage facility in Kizner, the republic of Udmurtia, where the remaining stockpile of the country’s chemical weapons had been kept and disposed of today upon the presidential order.

Among the officials in Kizner present during the on-line video conference with Putin were Mikhail Babich, chairman of the government commission on chemical disarmament, and Hamid Ali Rao, the deputy director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Ali Rao called Russia’s complete elimination of chemical weapons as a milestone event in the history of the country and expressed congratulations on behalf of the OPCW to the Russian government and President Putin for his personal control and contribution in the destruction of the chemical weapons stockpile.

Russia signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, commonly known as the Chemical Weapons Convention, or CWC on January 13, 1993 and ratified it on November 5, 1997.

Under its international liabilities, Russia was obliged to destroy its chemical weapons stockpiles by December 31, 2018.