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Vladimir Ugljow does not answer the phone for a long time. Then he picks up the phone, does not even wait for questions, begins to speak immediately: “Thank God the Germans were able to determine the substance in Alexei Navalny’s body,” says the chemist. During the Soviet era, he spent 15 years researching the chemical nerve agent Novichok, which made headlines around the world in 2018 when former double agent Sergej Skripal was poisoned with it in Salisbury, England.
Vladimir Ugljow, born 1946, a chemist, worked after studying in Schichany at the NIIOChT, the state research institute for organic chemistry and technology in Moscow. The institute sought out new war agents on behalf of the military. Under the guidance of their superior Pyotr Kirpitschow, scientists discovered there in the 1970s the new generation of neurotoxins that became known as “Novitschok”, literally “newcomer”. They belong to the group of organophosphates and are much more toxic than the most toxic substance known to date, the neurotoxin VX developed in the West. Ugljow lives in Anapa on the Black Sea.
