Chemical Weapons:
Russia currently possesses the world largest chemical weapons (CW) stockpile - 44,000 tons of Soviet era mustard gas, Lewisite, sarin, V-gas, and other chemicals that affect the nervous and circulatory systems.  In November 1997, the Russian Federation ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), thereby committing Russia to the eventual destruction of its entire CW stockpile.  However, with its economy virtually bankrupt, Russia cannot afford to fund the necessary CW destruction program (estimated to cost over $5 billion) without a massive influx of foreign –  particularly U.S. – funding.  If the United States ceases to contribute to the Russian CW destruction program, the Russians will be forced to withdraw from the CWC as Yeltsin's government has neither the funds nor the support in the Duma to continue destruction without international assistance.  The Departments of Energy, State and Defense currently fund several programs aimed at preventing the proliferation of Soviet era CW and the ‘brain drain' of former Soviet scientists to potentially hostile nations such as Iran.

Biological Weapons:
The Soviet Union's covert biological weapons (BW) program began in 1973, though serious advances in BW technology did not take off until the 1980's.  Unlike the U.S. program (terminated under President Nixon) which developed and stockpiled only those toxic agents that could be countered by antibiotics or vaccines, the Soviet scientists focused on developing agents for which there was no known cure on the theory that such agents would perforce be the most effective weapons of mass destruction.  The Soviets were signatories of the biological weapons convention (BWC), and thus the Soviet BW program was kept secret until the fall of the Soviet Union.  In 1992, President Yeltsin signed Russian Federation Decree No. 390 which forbade continued research or production of biological weapons (BW).  Since then the Russian Federation claims to have ceased research on BW, though former Soviet BW scientist Kenneth Alibek claims in his 1999 book, Biohazard, that Russian claims to have ceased BW research are not to be trusted.  According to Alibek: "The size and scope of this program were enormous. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, over 60,000 people were involved in the research, development, and production of biological weapons. Hundreds of tons of anthrax weapon formulation were stockpiled, along with dozens of tons of smallpox and plague. The total production capacity of all of the facilities involved was many hundreds of tons of various agents annually."