Russian chemist says worked on Novichok

MOSCOW: A Russian scientist told state media on Tuesday he worked on an official programme to produce the nerve agent Britain says was used against ex-spy Sergei Skripal, contradicting Moscow’s claims it never developed Novichok.

Leonid Rink, who told RIA Novosti he worked on a statebacked programme up to the early 1990s, added that the former double agent and his daughter would be dead had Moscow been involved in his poisoning.

“They are still alive. That means that either it was not the Novichok system at all, or it was badly concocted, carelessly applied,” he said in the interview.

“Or straight after the application, the English used an antidote, in which case they would have to have known exactly what the poison was,” he said.

Rink said he worked at a state laboratory in the closed town of Shikhany for 27 years, where the development of Novichok formed the basis of his doctoral dissertation.

“A large group of specialists in Shikhany and Moscow worked on ‘Novichok’,” he said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov last week said Moscow never had any programmes to develop the chemical weapon.

“I want to state with all possible certainty that the Soviet Union or Russia had no programmes to develop a toxic agent called Novichok,” he said.

The foreign ministry said on Tuesday this remained its position.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier said Britain had chosen the name “Novichok” because it sounded Russian and would implicate Moscow in the attempted killing. The name “immediately creates associations with Russia, something Russian, so as to immediately focus attention on our country,” Zakharova said.

She added that Britain, Slovakia, the Czech Republic or Sweden could have been the source of the nerve agent.

The countries have denied the claims and on Monday Sweden said it had summoned Russia’s ambassador for talks over the allegations. — AFP