Novichok poisonings leave Soviet defector’s family in fear

LONDON: The family of a Soviet defector who died in Salisbury in 2001 is living in fear following the recent poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in the same English city, according to his son.

Nikita Pasechnik, whose scientist father Vladimir Pasechnik defected to Britain in 1989 and suffered a stroke 12 years later, said his relatives are now “scared to death”.

“Every normal person would be fearful,” Nikita in a recent interview in the southwest English county of Dorset where he lives, blaming the death on Russian security services.

Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury in March with the Soviet-made Novichok nerve agent. They spent weeks recovering in hospital.

Britain has blamed the attempted assassination on Moscow, which has denied involvement.

“Even here in the UK I don’t feel safe – that was one of their goals with Skripal,” Nikita said.

“These two cases are different but the similarity between them is that I believe they killed my father.

“They poisoned him and they poisoned Skripal,” he alleged.

Nikita, an IT specialist, wants his father’s death 17 years ago probed. But other relatives worry it could make them targets.

Vladimir was a senior biologist who fled the Soviet Union as the Cold War was ending and exposed its vast clandestine programme adapting germs and viruses for military use.

In November 2001, aged 64, he was hospitalised after suffering a stroke and died within weeks.

Nikita said the doctors who treated his father said that “there were many clots simultaneously”.

“Basically two-thirds of the brain was affected and the doctor said ‘It’s very unusual.... It is strange’.”