Novichok agent
Novichok agents were developed at the GosNIIOKhT state chemical research institute by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993. Russian scientists who developed the nerve agents claim they are the deadliest ever made. Some variants possibly five to eight times more potent than VX, and others up to ten times more powerful than soman. In November 2019, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons added the agents to the list of controlled substances.
About Novichok agent in brief
Novichok agents were developed at the GosNIIOKhT state chemical research institute by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993. Some Novichok agents at STP are solids while others are liquids. It is thought that dispersal for the solids is possible by ultrafine powder. Russian scientists who developed the nerve agents claim they are the deadliest ever made. Some variants possibly five to eight times more potent than VX, and others up to ten times more powerful than soman. In November 2019, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons added the agents to the list of controlled substances. This is one of the first major changes to the treaty since it was agreed in the 1990s in response to the 2018 poisonings in the UK. The Russian government denies producing or researching agents under the title Novich Ok. In September 2020, the German government said that opposition figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who was evacuated from Omsk to Berlin for treatment in late August after becoming ill during his flight, was poisoned by a Novichok agent. The UK government determined that a novichokAgent was used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England in March 2018. It was unanimously confirmed by four laboratories around the world, according to the OPCW. The agent is also believed to have been involved in poisoning of a British couple in Amesbury, UK, four months later, believed to be caused by nerve agent discarded after the Salisbury attack. In 2016 Iranian chemists working at a university in Tehran synthesised five of the seven NovichOK agents for analysis and produced detailed mass spectral data which was added to the Central Analytical Database.
A small amount of agent A-230 was also claimed to be synthesised in the Czech Republic in 2017 for the purpose of obtaining analytical data to help defend against these novel toxic compounds. According to a publication by two chemists, Lev Fyodorov and Vil Mirzayanov in Moskovskii weekly in 1992, the Russian Military Chemical Complex was using defence conversion money for development of a chemical warfare facility. The publication appeared just on the eve of Russia’s signing of the Chemical Weapons Weapons Convention. The writer made his disclosure out of concerns of environmental concerns. He was the head of a counter-intelligence department and performed measurements of the chemical weapons facilities to make sure foreign spies could not detect any traces of production of the deadly substances. To his horror, he found the levels of deadly substances were eighty times greater than the maximum safe concentration of the substances he had prepared for the KGB to test outside the country. He has since brought a treason case against the Russian General Prosecutor for effectively admitting the existence ofNovichok and other chemical agents. The most versatile is A-232. NovICHok agents have never been used on the battlefield. It is believed that some of these agents are binary weapons, in which precursors for the nerve agent are mixed in a munition to produce the agent just prior to its use.
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This page is based on the article Novichok agent published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 23, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
