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Russia is moving to shut down the world’s leading chemical weapons inspection organizatio before it formally blames the Assad regime for a deadly sarin attack in northwest Syria on April 4.

The UN and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are expected to report to the UN Security Council this month that the regime carried out the assault on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province, killing at least 92 people and wounding hundreds. It may also conclude that regime warplanes used sarin on Latamneh in northern Hama Province on March 30, injuring almost 100 people.

But the mandate of the UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism, unanimously created by the Security Council in 2015 and renewed in 2016 for another year, expires in mid-November.

Mikhail Ulyanov, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s non-proliferation and arms control department, made the far-from-subtle threat on Friday.

Saying there were “serious problems” with the inquiry, he said in New York:

In order to judge if it deserves an extension of the mandate, we need to see the report to be issued on the 26th of October and assess it,” Ulyanov told a briefing at the United Nations in New York.

I ask myself what is the reason for the extension of the mandate of this mechanism if it is not capable and is not willing to fulfill its mandate.

We will wait for the report and then we will define our position.

Some UN diplomats said a resolution over the JIM’s mandate could be put to a vote before its report is submitted. A Russian veto would kill the extension.

The JIM has found that regime forces were responsible for three chlorine gas attacks in northwest Syria in 2014 and 2015.

Russia has been the essential defender of the Assad regime as it tries to escape blame for a series of chemical weapons attacks since 2012, notably the multiple sarin assaults near Damascus in August 2013 that killed at least 1,400 people. Because there was no JIM at the time, the regime has never been formally charged over the attacks.

Despite the regime’s pledge to hand over chemical weapons stocks — Russia’s initiative to divert the US from military intervention —- it has continued to retain some material and carry out chlorine attacks in nprthwest Syria and the Damascus suburb, before returning to the use of sarin this spring.

Video: Civilians Greet Kurdish-Led Force Advancing in Raqqa

Civilians in Raqqa, held by the Islamic State since late 2013, greet advancing Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces:

The SDF says that, after more than three months of fighting in the city in northern Syria, ISIS has been pushed back into about 10%. It claims the holdouts have only pistols, rifles, light machine guns, and a dwindling supply of ammunition.

A spokesman for the Kurdish militia, which leads the SDF, said Raqqa may be cleared of ISIS fighters this weekend.
The activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said buses have arrived in the city, possibly to transport reamining ISIS personnel.

A local official explained further that the fighters are in negotiations with tribal elders over the terms of their withdrawal. He said about 100 — out of 300 to 400 estimated by the US-led coalition, supporting the SDF, to remain in Raqqa — had surrendered.