Russians selling sick ‘poison’ gifts

RUSSIAN companies are selling sick joke Novichok products despite outrage at the death of a British mother exposed to the nerve agent.

The latest item is a ‘cool’ £22 T-shirt emblazoned with the words Novichok made by Moscow company Spare Skin.

It promises online buyers they can expect ‘the love of beautiful women’ and ‘brutality in the eye’.

The company said: ‘When we posted the design of the Novichok on Behance [social network for designers], we got a huge number of negative reactions. But at what speed are these T-shirts selling now.’ Novichok – a chemical weapon created in the Soviet era – is also being used as the name of a craft beer, a vodka, a brand of coffee, a cocktail in Volgograd, and vegetable oil.

Drinkers are promised ‘a nerve-paralytic nirvana’ with a Novichok beer made by Alaska Brewery in Moscow.

Coffee Novichok is on the market in Russia, sold by the company Berserker Arms, which usually markets foreign military equipment. Its marketing reads: ‘Since you liked the Novichok so much, we decided to make a Salisbury edition.’

Cooking oil branded under the Novichock name has been on sale in Ulyanovsk – the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin.

In Volgograd – where England played Tunisia in the World Cup – a Novichok cocktail at the Gryadushka bar mocks the nerve agent attacks. It comes as Russian politicians are openly claiming Britain deliberately poisoned 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess and her partner Charlie Rowley, 45, in Amesbury, Wiltshire.