‘Novichok has no known cure, it is brutal,’ reveals Soviet scientist
THE former Russian double agent and his daughter poisoned by a deadly nerve agent will either die or be crippled by their exposure to Novichok, according to the whistleblower who alerted the world to Russia’s secret chemical weapons programme.
Vil Mirzayanov, a chemist who worked at the heart of the Soviet programme, said Russia was almost certainly the only country able to produce and deploy such a powerful nerve agent, and he warned that many more people may fall ill.
“It is at least 10 times more powerful than any known nerve agent. Plus it is practically incurable,” he said at his New Jersey home.
“These people are gone – the man and his daughter. Even if they survive they will not recover. I’m afraid many more people were exposed.”
He added that he believed the poison used in the Salisbury attack would have been manufactured in Russia as two, harmless components. They would have been brought into the UK and then combined inside a tiny, easily hidden aerosol spray that could be used to deliver a deadly dose as a “deliberate demonstration” to Moscow’s enemies around the world.
He spoke hours after Theresa May gave Vladimir Putin a midnight deadline of last night to explain the use of Novichok or face retaliation.
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia have been in hospital in a critical condition since being found unconscious outside a shopping centre on March 4.
Mrs May said either Russia carried out the attack or had lost control of its nerve agent.
Dr Mirzayanov said even the existence and formula of Novichok had been a closely guarded secret, making it “unthinkable” that another country or terrorist group had managed to obtain it, or had the expertise to manufacture it. “Only Russia could do this,” he said. “They would never give it away.”
The Russian scientist, who fled his homeland in 1995 and now lives in New Jersey, revealed the existence of the Novichok nerve agents in 1992 but said it was still so little understood that it had never been banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention. Nor had it ever been declared by Russia.
That made it perfect for assassinations, he said, as Russian security forces believed it could not be traced back to Moscow.
This was the first time he believed it had ever been used and said it was most likely weaponised as a spray. It would almost certainly have been manufactured in Russia, he added. Dr Mirzayanov headed a counter-intelligence unit which monitored the surrounding area to ensure Novichok – Russian for “newcomer” – or other nerve agents were not leaking out where they could be detected and analysed by foreign spies. He went public in 1992 after discovering frightening levels of chemicals outside the facility.
Dr Mirzayanov was fired and arrested for treason. The subsequent trial collapsed but not before he managed to copy down 60 secret documents submitted in evidence. He fled Russia and has lived ever since in New Jersey. He had no idea his old life was about to intrude until he read about the poisoning in Salisbury last week.
“I never, ever supposed they would use Novichok,” he said. “I supposed that there was no necessity to. It’s more brutal, more painful. But what could be so important that you have to use something this terrible? It was a deliberate demonstration by Putin of his power against his enemies. This was a brazen and deliberate demonstration.”
The agent causes vomiting and convulsions as the central nervous system shuts down, he said.