Novichok

Novichok  (nerve agent)
A-234 (according to Mirzayanov)

Novichok is a chemical nerve agent that came to prominence during the Skripal Affair.

Full article: Skripal Affair

History

According to British chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon,novichok is a deadly nerve agent that was allegedly developed in the Soviet Union at a laboratory complex in Shikhany, in central Russia.

Vil Mirzayanov, a Russian chemist who in the early 1990s revealed the existence of that class of ultra-powerful nerve agents, claimed that Novichok was tested at Nukus, in Uzbekistan. Mirzayanov defected to the United States in 1995., where he was elected to the Presidium of the Milli Mejlis of the Tartar People in exile, and published a Declaration of Independence of Tatarstan (presently a province of Russia.)

Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who visited the site at Nukus, stated it had been dismantled with US help. In a blog post, he wrote:

“The same people who assured you Saddam Hussein had WMDs now assure you Russian ‘Novichok’ nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil.”

The UK government insists that its case rests not just on the argument that Novichok was developed in Russia, but what it says is past form, a record of Russian state-sponsored assassination of former spies.

Preparation

Novichok agents are binary agents, meaning that they are prepared by mixing two substances. They have a short live span, making exact determination of their origin difficult.

U.S. patent

In relation to the Skripal Affair, Russia submitted evidence that the Novichok nerve agent was produced and patented in the United States as a chemical weapon in 2015, and was mentioned in over 140 patents in the period 2002-2016.

Main Image – Patent Powder Dispersal Device – filed 2013, patent pending for the delivery of nerve agents, specifically, Novichok and sarin: Examples of nerve agents may include G series such as Tabun (GA), Sarin (GB), Soman (GD), Cyclosarin (GF), GV series such as Novichok agents, GV (nerve agent), V series such as VE, VG, VM, and the like. Source: Powder Dispersal Device and method

Novichok and the Skripal Affair

As Hamish de Bretton-Gordon repeatedly stated, he claimed to know Borisov and Petrov smuggled in a Nina Ricci perfume bottle filled with "less than half an eggcup full" (about 15 mls or 15 grams) of novichok. This amount would have been sufficient to kill about 5,000 people if the bottle had broken, an unprecedented incident. A glass phial containing just one drop would have been sufficient to kill Skripal.

Cultural references

Novichok was featured in episodes 50,51 and 52 of the spy drama Strike Back, which was shown in the US and the UK between 21 November 2017 to 9 March 2018. Central to the plot in the first half of the season is Karim Markov, a Russian scientist who has devoted his life to developing Novichok nerve agents. The dialogue frequently name-drops Novichok, in episodes that were shown in the weeks before the Skripals were discovered.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Date
Skripal Affair	“Austria officially confirmed this week that the British Government’s allegation that Novichok, a Russian chemical warfare agent, was used in England by GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, in March 2018, was a British invention. Investigations in Vienna by four Austrian government ministries, the BVT intelligence agency, and by Austrian prosecutors have revealed that secret OPCW reports on the blood testing of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, copies of which were transferred to the Austrian government, did not reveal a Russian-made nerve agent.”	July 2020

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:First Recorded Successful Novichok Synthesis was in 2016 – By Iran, in Cooperation with the OPCW	blog post	17 March 2018	Craig Murray	Beginning in late 2016, Iranian scientists succeeded in synthesising a number of Novichoks in full cooperation with the OPCW. This makes a complete nonsense of Theresa May’s “of a type developed by Russia” line, used to Parliament and the UN Security Council.
Document:Killing Diplomacy	Article	15 March 2018	Paul Craig Roberts Dmitry Orlov	Sane people will choose politics over war, and sane – that is, competently governed – nations will choose diplomacy over belligerence and confrontation. If we look around in search of such incompetently governed nations, two examples readily present themselves: the United States and the United Kingdom.
Document:Navalny, Ukraine and the West	article	18 September 2020	'Rhys James'	A tongue-in-cheek, mildly satirical commentary on the latest "Vladimir Putin poisoned my cat" Novichok nonsense emanating from the Westerm media over the September 2020 hospitalisation of Russian 'opposition politician' and Western super-hero Alexei Navalny
Document:Novichok And Theresa May's "45 Minute Moment"	Article	15 March 2018		Is Britain off to war (in Syria) to save the government from all sorts of disasters back at home? Challenging a Prime Minister in the midst of an international conflict is always difficult – just look at the vitriol thrown at Jeremy Corbyn for doing so yesterday – who was proved right in the face of the same accusations with Tony Blair.
Document:Novichok Part Deux: A Fusion of Media, Government & Military	Article	10 July 2018	Kenny Coyle	BBC diplomatic and defence correspondent Mark Urban revealed this week that he had in fact been meeting secretly with Sergei Skripal over a year ago.
Document:Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense	blog post	3 September 2020	Craig Murray	The US and Saudi Arabia have every reason to instigate a split between Germany and Russia at this time. Navalny is certainly a victim of international politics. That he is a victim of Putin I tend to doubt.
Document:Probable Western Responsibility for Skripal Poisoning	blog post	28 April 2018	Craig Murray Clive Ponting	Those of us who have been in the belly of the beast and have worked closely with the intelligence services, really do know what they and the British government are capable of. They are not “white knights”.
Document:Russia Claims US Deploys Warships For Imminent Attack On Syria, Trains Militants For False Flag Attack	blog post	17 March 2018	'Tyler Durden'	United States-led coalition to "retaliate" for another false flag chemical attack done by the White Helmets in Syria
Document:Russia, Novichok and the long tradition of British government misinformation	article	12 April 2018	David Miller
Document:Salisbury Incident - Skripal Case Investigators Could Learn From The Lockerbie Affair	Article	24 September 2018	Ludwig De Braeckeleer	Porton Down has been renamed many times: RARDE, DERA, Dstl, but it's still the same damn place.
Document:The Salisbury Festival of Russophobia Opens Today	Wikispooks Page	14 October 2024	Craig Murray	"The Public Inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, like the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, is designed entirely to conceal the truth and further the official narrative."
Document:The Salisbury Poisoning One Year On - An Open Letter to the Metropolitan Police	open letter		Rob Slane
Document:“Former Russian Spy Sergei Skripal May Have Been Poisoned by BZ Nerve Agent”	blog post	16 April 2018	Ludwig De Braeckeleer	Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: “Former Russian Spy Sergei Skripal May Have Been Poisoned by BZ Nerve Agent”

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.